Microsoft announced the start of a limited beta testing program for its Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1. The software giant said the beta would become available this month to between 10,000 and 15,000 testers. "Today we release the Beta of windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to a private group of Beta testers via connect.microsoft.com," Nick White, a program manager on the Vista team, said.

Apparently, according to bloggers who disregarded the annoying non-disclosure agreement, the service pack indeed solves a few problems, like sluggish network copy speed, slow resume from hibernation and Wi-Fi connection problems.

According to Microsoft, Windows Vista SP1 will not add new features, but instead it will address key feedback received from its customers. Also the company insisted that the SP1 will not affect any applications that are currently running on Windows Vista.

Also, Microsoft said that the Service Pack 1 will improve existing features. For example, the service pack improves the performance of the desktop shell, but it does not provide a new search user interface or a new version of Windows Media Center.

As Microsoft explained the updates packed in Windows Vista SP 1 fall into three categories: Quality improvements, improvements to the administration experience and support for emerging hardware and standards. Also, Windows Vista will include all previously released updates for Windows Vista, as part of monthly security bulletins.

By quality improvements Microsoft targets key issues of Windows Vista: security, reliability and performance. For example, Windows Vista SP1 will include application programming interfaces (APIs) by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work with kernel patch protection on x64 versions of Windows Vista.

Also SP1 will enhance BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) by offering an additional multifactor authentication method that combines a key protected by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated personal identification number (PIN).

Microsoft said that Windows SP1 will improve reliability when Windows Vista is used with newer graphics cards and will address the issues that might appear when the users upgrade from Windows XP. After applying Windows Vista SP 1 the users should experience better speed when copying and extracting files and their PCs will respond faster when activated from Hibernate and Resume modes.

For notebook users Windows Vista SP 1 could mean better battery life, as Microsoft reduced the CPU utilization. Many of the changes in Windows Vista SP1 will address also the administration Experience. Administrators will surely appreciate the improvements to Group Policy management.

In the SP1 timeframe, administrators can download an out-of-band release that will give them the ability to add comments to Group Policy Objects (GPOs) or individual settings and search for specific settings.

Also the update will add support for upcoming standards and hardware, such as Direct3D 10.1, Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), and the Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT), a file system for Flash drives. The service pack will include support for Secure Digital (SD) Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA), which will be on compliant SD host controllers soon, to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization. SP 1 will improve also performance of Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, by reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.

Microsoft will offer three methods for Windows Vista XP SP 1 deployment: Express, Stand-alone, that is recommended for computers with limited Internet connectivity and for applying the service pack to multiple computers. The standalone update will be about 1GB for x86 platforms and require 7GB of free disk space to install. The third method of deployments is the slipstream version of Windows Vista SP1, a media that already contains the service pack, which companies can use to deploy the operating system to new computers or to upgrade existing computers.