Microsoft Corp. yesterday quietly launched the release candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to the general public, therefore keeping their last week’s promise. However, while this is a public release, it is still a Release Candidate, and Microsoft is recommending that the average customer "wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack" and reminding testers that "a Service Pack is not a feature release—we are not looking for new feature suggestions, only SP2 regressions, crashes, and confirmation of fixes we've made will be considered for this milestone."

Besides new security and management features, such as BitLocker To Go and Applocker, Windows 7 has benefited from extensive testing with enterprise customers, according to Gavriella Schuster, a senior director for Windows client product management, in an interview. Microsoft developed four new customer and partner focus groups and spent six months planning how it would build Windows 7, and how it would engage customers early and often in that process, before even beginning development, she said.

With Vista, Microsoft offered the DVD decoding software only in its consumer and Ultimate versions. When some businesses complained that they needed DVD-playing abilities too, Microsoft added that feature to the business versions.

Another change came when the company showed customers its BitLocker-to-go feature, which brings the file encryption to portable devices like USB flash drivers. Businesses like the feature, Schuster said, but were concerned that the encryption would prevent the devices from being used later with Windows XP and Vista machines. As a result, Schuster said, Microsoft decided to engineer some measure of support in earlier operating systems for BitLocker-to-go. Now, when protected devices are inserted in an XP or Vista machine, users can enter their credentials and then use the device in a read-only manner.

Moreover, Schuster said Microsoft did qualitative research with more than 100 of its top customers, and quantitative research with nearly 4,000 customers in developing and emerging markets. The quantitative research brought out three main areas of concern: risk management, compliance and mobility, Schuster said. Key findings included that 56 percent of those surveyed said they needed help protecting corporate data on laptops.

One can grab the standalone installer package from the Microsoft Download Center for 32-bit five languages and 32-bit all languages, 64-bit five languages and 64-bit all languages, as well as Itanium five languages and Itanium all languages. If you have Vista in English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish, download the five languages package, otherwise get the larger "all language" version. There is also a five language and an all language .iso image available, as well as a patch that will allow you to get it via Windows Update.