We were expecting an extended period before the first beta release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Microsoft has surprised us all with news of a mid-July release.

Mary Jo Foley says, “Word (from various sources who asked not to be named) is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007. If Vista SP1 is released in November, the Windows client team will be sticking to a schedule company officials outlined a year ago, when the official plan of record was to release Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server) simultaneously.”

This will be a very short beta period, reduced from a year or more, and may result in users shunning the eventual release, as happened with the massive SP2 for Windows XP.

So what’s likely to be in Vista SP1? It’s expected to be more about fixes than new features, with elements enhancing or supplmenting features that are already there.

As well as required desktop-search modifications, other factors may be :

* Performance tweaks lessening the amount of time it takes to copy files and shut down Vista machines.
* Improved transfer performance and decreased CPU utilization via support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA)
* Support for ExFat, the Windows file format for flash memory storage and other consumer devices
* Improvements to BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow not just encryption of the whole Vista volume, but also locally created data volumes
* The ability to boot Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on an x64 machine
* Improved success rate for firewalled MeetingSpace and Remote Assistance connections.

The above is just a provisional list, so don’t be surprised if it’s incomplete.

If you have Windows Vista Ultimate or Home Premium you have some great tools for recording various media.

You may already know that you can record movies from television with Windows Media Center. It’s probably one of the easiest things you can do with the program. But there are a couple of things to remember when you record a favorite movie from TV.

You need to set some general recording options to make sure you catch the entire movie. And second, there are two separate ways to record a movie: as it plays on live television or by setting up a request in the guide.

Microsoft has a web page which shows you how to do this, plus a load of other tips for getting more out of Windows Vista.

Take a look.

Over at istartedsomething.com, Long Zheng questions the value of the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras package : “Besides BitLocker encryption, a few pro-user tools (RDP, CompletePC backups, shadow copy etc..) and the Family Discount program, the only other reason to even consider purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate was for the Ultimate Extras”.

This has failed to meet expectations. “…what’s coming up next? The next Ultimate Extras is most likely to be Digital Publications, in other words, free e-books with tips and tricks to using Windows Vista. I fail to see how that is cool or even helpful …”

This is what was promised :

Judge for yourself if it’s worth paying for anything more than the Premium product.

Yes, I know of all the complaints that portmanteau products like Microsoft Office are much too big, too complex, and contain hundreds of features that most people don’t need and will never use.

Granted. But that’s the nature of the beast. Try using Google Documents and Spreadsheets for anything more than simple projects. And you need to be online to use them.

I’ve had Office 2007 for a couple of months now, and while I haven’t yet got round to trying out every program bundled in there, I have to say I’m very impressed. I came to it directly from Office 2000, so missed the intermediate experience of the 2003 version.

At first, the so-called Ribbon feature was a bit baffling, like all supposedly intuitive controls are. But once I found my way around the different groupings of features and learned what all of the icons stood for, I began to revel in its clean simplicity and ease of use — I’m usually wary of geeks being “intuitive”, because more often than not, they’re not.

However, Office 2007 is a triumph of design and utility. Nowadays, we expect software will be over-engineered, just to get ahead of the competition, but invoking dread and misery in customers, who have to surmount a huge learning curve to get it working satisfactorily in their interests.

I’m not going to go into fine detail here — that’s for another day — but I believe Word to be the best word processor around now, and Excel to be irreplaceable. No, I haven’t got Microsoft shares, and I don’t speak with forked tongue.

Smaller features too stand out. Like most folk I don’t need the massive clout of Photoshop for my image handling activities. But I do want something better than the cheaper programs out there. One surprise is the Microsoft Office Picture Handler which comes bundled in with the Office suite. It really is a doddle to use and has all the functionality I need, without the baffling overload of some other programs.

I’ll be returning to this review in more depth later, but first impressions are : well done Microsoft.

It’s not often you hear that, is it?