Office 2007 SP1 might be avail next week, and other SP news

UPDATED ON DECEMBER 10:

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows reports that the SP1 is here and available via DVD and through Windows Update. Thurrott is a public fan of Vista. He writes:

"If you were seriously waiting for SP1, I feel for you. I will argue, as I have all along, that Vista was quite good, thank you very much, the moment it sprang out of Microsoft's womb in late November 2006. I will point out that the intervening year has seen dramatic compatibility and performance enhancements to Vista, and that the experience of upgrading or installing this new OS is now better than it's ever been. And I will bore you with tales of how uninspiring Vista's predecessor, Windows XP, is by comparison.

But whether you agree with Thurrott's assessment of Vista or not, his blog offers details a plenty on how to get your hands on the service pack.

FROM DECEMBER 3:

Rumor has it that service pack No. 1 for Office 2007 could be finished early and be available by December 10, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley reports. In Barcelona, Microsoft officials said they believed SP1 would ship in Q1 2008. Meanwhile, today Microsoft did release the Release Candidate version of Windows XP Service Pack 3, reports Active Network. Microsoft didn't disclose when the official SP3 will be available for the general public, but this version is available to subscribers of the Microsoft Developer Network and TechNet (which accounts for many enterprise users).

In more SP news, SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 will also reportedly be released any minute, including a SP for the freebie version, WSS 3.0, says Foley. The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technical Team has an official list of addons for the SharePoint SP. These include support for AJAX, plus new STSADM commands that ease the repartitioning of databases. A long list of bugs were fixed too.

Of course, the Exchange 2007 SP1 was released late last week. The two most compelling new features the industry has been anticipating is Windows Server 2008 compatibility and Standby Continuous Clustering (SCR), says Exchange 2007 guru Ross Mistry.

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