Service pack one for vista was released to the general public through windows update on Tuesday. You can also download SP1 from the links below if you would like a local copy. There are allot of improvements with service pack one with the main emphasis on performance and reliability. Service pack one will also support newer types of hardware. Also allow plenty of time for the upgrade as I have seen the upgrade take over an hour on a few machines.

Download Links
SP One For Windows Vista

SP One For Windows Vista 64 Bit

Since the first day I started using Vista as my main PC I have been missing the run as feature which was present in XP. I still really have no idea why Microsoft decided to leave this out, but they did. As always Mark Russinovich has published a small little application that allows you to introduce this functionality back into Vista and Server 2008.

Once you have the tool downloaded you will have to open a command prompt and run the program with the /reg command line switch. When you have completed this step Run As Different User will now show up in the list of options when you right click a file.

Thanks again Mark for providing this tool!

Link To ShellRunas v1.01

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc300361.aspx

There has been allot of talk about what Vista SP1 bring to the table. If you have time check out this article written by Long Zheng that talks about a couple more interesting improvements that SP1 makes.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080213/vista-sp1-power-efficiency-improvements/