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Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) looks set to hit manufacturers in April next year.

According to Malaysian website TechARP.com, which has been rather good at playing the Microsoft release guessing game with both XP SP3 and Vista SP1, the operating system’s next service pack will land in April 2009.

Microsoft spat out a beta of Vista SP2 in late October. At the time the firm’s Windows product veep Mike Nash said that the final release-to-manufacturers (RTM) date would not be announced until the company is satisfied with customer and partner feedback.

TechARP, which quoted a confidential source, reckoned Microsoft plans to deliver Vista SP2 by the first half of its fiscal 2009, in other words by the end of April next year.

Bundled into the new release will be support for “new types of hardware and several emerging standards.”

Microsoft has already provided details of some new features in the next service pack for the unloved OS.

It will include Windows Search 4.0, the Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack, the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media "natively" in Vista, a simplified tool for configuring Wi-Fi, and the exFAT file system will be able to support Coordianted Universal Time (UTC) timestamps.

The software giant won’t be revealing anything to World+Dog about the upcoming release until February next year, according to the source.

Meanwhile, here's Microsoft's official word on Vista SP2:

"The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality. So we'll track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for the release."

Interestingly, Microsoft seems to be in a hurry with this release especially given how much it procrastinated over XP SP3, which finally landed nearly four years after XP SP2.

Full article here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12...sp2_april_rtm/