Being that this is my first story to take advantage of HUB’s new author minisites, I wanted to make it a short (but sweet) ‘test’ article.

If you haven’t heard by now, word on the street is that tomorrow we will be graced with the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. After being delayed (a couple of times, actually), starting on Tuesday March 18th Vista users will finally be able to seek out and download the first service pack update for the system. It won’t be pushed to Vista machines via Automatic Updates until next month, so for those early adopters willing to weather the storm, you’ll have to manually use Windows Update or head to Microsoft’s Download Centre for the patch.

It turns out Vista SP1’s major focus is going to be on reliability and compatibility, rather than performance. Even though it will include all of the smaller, performance enhancing updates that have been released since Vista’s launch, if you’ve been keeping up to date with the OS, you probably won’t notice any changes. Instead, MS have decided to improve compatibility with this service pack, so hopefully some of those XP-centric applications are less prone to crashing after installation.

Before you update, I’d recommend that you check out the latest issue of HUB:TCP as April’s issue is all about backing up your data. Before you dive headfirst into what could be a service pack update nightmare, it'd be a smart move to look into ways to back up your data. Whether it’s something like a Secure Online Backup or Off-Site Backup Taken to a Whole New Level, every little bit of preparation will only make things easier for you in case of disaster. The last thing anybody wants is to hose their system without a restoration plan, right?