Paul Thurrott posted an interesting preview on Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Here's a taster:

There are a number of performance fixes in SP1 as well. Zipkin told me that Microsoft was addressing a number of scenarios that have caused user concern, including file copy, unzipping files, Resume and Hibernate, and shutting down delays. In one example, the Vista Sync Center had an issue that added five seconds to shutdown. "There's no single performance issue," Microsoft Director John Gray said. "We think of performance as 'the things that customers do." The file copy issue is a good example. Though many customers have reported slowdowns with file copy in different scenarios, each of these scenarios--same disk to same disk, disk to disk, across the network, whatever--are actually different types of actions. And though many have complained that the Vista copy dialog seems to get hung up while displaying a "calculating" message, the system is actually still copying the file while that message is being displayed. So in that case, the message and whatever calculation its doing need to be addressed (and have been) but the actual file copy is progressing normally.

While Microsoft shipped a pair of fixes last month that address various Vista performance issues, the company is also planning a second major shipment of performance fixes this month (October 2007), so be on the lookout for that. "Performance issues are one of the most satisfying things to fix," Zipkin said. "Some are being pushed out in August and October before the service pack, and others will come in SP1. We're fixing things like the photo screen saver, which was taking up too much memory and slowed performance when users tried to get back to work, and the copy calculation issue."

Vista SP1 also includes support for emerging hardware and standards that weren't so widespread in late 2006 (at Vista's RTM) but are gaining in important now. "We can't wait for the next version of Windows to add support for this stuff, " Zipkin said. "But we also need the hardware to test it on, and it wasn't available last year." Wireless-N is a great example: This type of networking equipment is becoming increasingly common even though it hasn't officially been standardized or finalized. "We can test it and certify it [for Vista] now even though the spec isn't technically finalized yet," Zipkin said. "We can't wait on Windows 7."

Microsoft is also addressing complaints about the BitLocker administrative user experience. The BitLocker control panel is being extensively updated and the feature now supports the ability to automatically encrypt non-system drives. (This functionality is also available in Windows Server 2008; that makes sense, given that Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 use the same code base.) Incidentally, I was told that BitLocker would continue its behavior of not working with external USB drives, as this is by design."BitLocker is not about moving data from machine to machine on a flash drive," Zipkin told me. "This is not going to work because it looks too much like an attack."

There are dozens of other tiny refinements. Printing to local printers in Terminal Services (TS) is much easier. Printer management has been improved. The Search item is being removed from the Start menu to accommodate antitrust complaints from Google. (You can still access the Search window by tapping F3 or WinKey + F, by the way.) Disk Defragmenter has been updated so you can choose which drive you'd like to defrag. "Nothing huge," Zipkin added.