Vista SP1 Release Candidate 1 Expected Next Week, Public Beta Week After

Windows Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) has several nifty new features, and a few performance tweaks. Anyone hoping to get their hands on said features and performance tweaks will be able to do that in a week or two. Next week, select beta testers (most likely the same ones that got a copy of Vista SP1 Beta code) will be able to play with Vista SP1 RC1. In the second week of December, Microsoft is most likely going to start a public beta program, much like the public beta program that Vista originally had. The current build is 17051, and Microsoft hopes to have a final Vista SP1 build out by early 2008.