SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had

Microsoft has pulled the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 forward to the final quarter of this year, according to a speculative report.

The company hasn't officially announced when it plans to squirt out SP1 for its current operating system, but that hasn't stopped the rumours from swirling around the interwebs.

TechARP has been bang on the money in the past about when a Microsoft Windows service pack would rock up for both XP and Vista, so given its remarkably good sense of smell around Redmond's roadmaps it might be fair to assume that this rumour could prove accurate too.

The Register has asked Microsoft to comment on this story, but at time of writing it hadn't got back to us.

In January, a tech blogger discovered a Windows Registry Key that pointed to SP1 of the operating system. As a result some people concluded that Microsoft was planning to push out a service pack for Windows 7 soon.

In response to the rumours earlier this year, Microsoft told us: "There is currently no news around this at the moment."

Whether that canned statement will change in light of the latest speculation remains to be seen, however.

As we've noted previously, Microsoft has a well-established lifecycle for its Windows-based service packs. It took the software vendor 14 months to release SP1 for its bug-ridden, driver support-shy Vista OS.

There's no reason why Microsoft would speed up its own self-imposed deadline for its much better received - though still not watertight - Windows 7 operating system.

The software maker released Windows 7 to OEMs in June last year. It landed on retail shelves in October 2009. So the firm spinning out a service pack in the final quarter of this year sounds about the normal Microsoft time frame to us. ®

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything