MS To Release SP2 To A Wider Group

Microsoft to release Vista SP2 beta to more testers next week | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:36 am Microsoft will release a beta of its forthcoming Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) to a wider group of testers on October 29. Microsoft had been testing SP2 among a very select group of testers for the past couple of weeks. Last week, the company began signing up testers for a broader beta, which testers were told would be released sometime in the next four weeks. As the Hotfix.Net site reported, Microsoft has begun rolling out that broader beta of Vista SP2 this week. The build number for the beta is 16489. (Thanks to Neowin for the pointer to the Hotfix site.) Via the Vista Team blog, Microsoft said on October 24 to expect an even wider group of Technology Adoption Program (TAP) testers to get the SP2 beta bits on October 29.

Testers who received invitations to the Vista SP2 beta said they were told it would incorporate Windows Search 4, support for the VIA 64-bit CPU and Bluetooth support. Microsoft confirmed some of those fixes and features will be in the final SP2 in today’s blog posting. The company also said to expect SP2 to: Add the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista. Add Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration. Enable the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones. I haven’t yet heard about any testers getting the Windows Server 2008 SP2 bits. That beta seemingly was timed to coincide with the Vista SP2 one. I’ve asked Microsoft for more information on when testers can expect to get those beta bits. No word so far............