Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 is ready

Microsoft has released to manufacturing (RTM) Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2008 R2, and for Windows 7. According to the release announcement, SP1 will be provided to volume licensees, MSDN and TechNet subscribers on the 16 February, then from the 22 February all other customers will receive the update via the Windows Update service. It will also be available from the Windows Download Center.

This service pack is a relatively minor upgrade. It combines all the previously released stability and security updates, but there are no new features for Windows 7 apart from the support for the Advanced Vector Extensions instruction set. Windows Server 2008 R2 gains two new features – RemoteFX 3D and Dynamic Memory. RemoteFX allows thin clients to use server-side GPU resources to provide hardware acceleration to Direct3D and OpenGL applications. Dynamic Memory allows Hyper-V to make better use of the available memory, such that in aggregate, virtual machines operate as though they have more memory than is physically installed in the server hosting the VMs.

In the announcement, Microsoft also described Windows Thin PC which is due for release next year. Thin PC is a special version of Windows 7 designed to be used as a thin client.

(trk)