Microsoft: SP2 for Windows Server 2008, Vista hit final beta

Windows software expected before end of June.

Microsoft Wednesday made available to its MSDN and TechNet subscribers the final beta of Service Pack 2 for both Vista and Windows Server 2008.

A publicly available version of the service packs, which include all the updates delivered since SP1, will come next week, the company said. It did not provide a specific data.

The SP2 releases include new hardware support, enterprise features, setup and deployment upgrades and new application compatibility support.

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Microsoft Wednesday made available to its MSDN and TechNet subscribers the final beta of Service Pack 2 for both Vista and Windows Server 2008.

A publicly available version of the service packs, which include all the updates delivered since SP1, will come next week, the company said. It did not provide a specific data.

The SP2 releases include new hardware support, enterprise features, setup and deployment upgrades and new application compatibility support.

The final release of the software will come before the end of June, according to the Windows Vista Team blog. There have been reports that the target date is in mid-May, but Microsoft will not confirm that timeframe.

There has been but one public beta of Windows Server 2008 and Vista released, which came in Dec. 2008.

SP2 includes updates to corporate features including integration of the Hyper-V virtualization environment, improved power management features on both the server and the desktop, and backward compatibility for Terminal Server license keys.

Also included is a Service Pack clean up tool that recovers hard disk space used by previous Vista updates. SP2 includes 691 hotfixes.

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