Microsoft has announced that it had wrapped up work on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and would start delivering the major upgrade on Feb. 22 through Windows Update. The update will bring additional support for Windows 7 clients to effectively communicate with third-party identity federation services and will improve the ability to communicate identity and authentication information between organizations and Improved HDMI audio device performance. All Windows 7 users will download SP1 and update via Microsoft Download Center on 22nd February.
From the windows blog:
Today we officially handed off the final release (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to our OEM partners. On February 16th Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will be available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers as well as Volume License customers. On February 22nd, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will become generally available for folks to download via the Microsoft Download Center and available on Windows Update.
Microsoft has said several times that Windows 7 SP1 would not include any new features specific to the operating system, but would instead be composed of the security patches and nonsecurity fixes that had already been issued via Windows Update.
The only additions to SP1 include an updated Remote Desktop client designed to work with RemoteFX, a new technology that debuts with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. RemoteFX is designed to improve the graphics performance of Windows 7 virtual machines hosted on Server 2008 R2 SP1 systems. Windows 7 SP1 also supports “Dynamic Memory,” a feature in Server 2008 R2 SP1 that lets IT staff adjust guest virtual machines’ memory on the fly.
Microsoft touted the benefits of Windows 7 SP1 to corporations, claiming that RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory would let computer makers design and sell low-cost clients that run Windows 7 in a virtual machine.
