Windows 7 SP 1 beta was released Monday for people to download and try out. Most people are asking what it changes. The answer to that is nothing… nothing at all. Service pack 1 for Windows 7 is just a roll up of all the updates since Windows 7 has come out. This just makes it easier for when you are reinstalling windows, you don’t have to download 33+ updates you just have to download one big update. That’s about it.
Now I have a question. Should Microsoft be adding something with SP1? I think they should. They need to add something to SP1 to give people a resin to get it. Even if it was new wallpaper, they need something so that when people update to SP1 they know that they did it. In Windows XP SP2 there were a lot of resins to update to XP SP2 like a stronger firewall and the security center. These things made Windows XP a little safer and gave people a resin to update to XP SP2. They were also physical changes that the user could see.
Service packs have always been just update roll ups in the past, with the exception of XP SP2. But shouldn’t that change shouldn’t they give people the incentive to get service packs so that they can stay safe and up to date?
If you want to see the screen shots of the install process you can see them here.