Windows Vista Service Pack I has been released to manufacturing, Microsoft says, pegging the software update to a public roll-out in March. Along with Vista SPI, Windows Server 2008 is also said to be finished and set to arrive in the very near future. Mike Nash from the Windows Product Management group at Microsoft confirmed Vista SPI's arrival, saying that the update contains "reliability
and performance" enhancements as well as improved hardware support.

In mid-April, Vista SPI will be served to customers who chose to have system updates downloaded automatically. Five languages will be supported out of the gate: English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. The remaining languages will follow in April. Microsoft has released some details about Vista SPI on its website.

Although precise details of what will be in Vista SPI are not yet available, judging by the beta releases, the update will address a number of common Vista headaches. Vista SPI is said to improve hardware compatibility, one of the chief problems for many that made the leap from XP only to find that their peripheral devices wouldn't work under Vista.

Other changes include speeding up core system tasks, including sleep, hibernate, resume, start up and shut down. Copying or transferring files should also be sped up and there are also said to be support for new file formats in Vista.