Office 2007 SP1 goes live, Windows XP SP3 RC1 follows along

As anticipated and without much fanfare, Microsoft this morning made active links for downloads of Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1, as well as the complete Office 2007 Service Pack 1.

A Knowledgebase article detailing the contents of O2K7 SP1 had also been made available this morning, though BetaNews noticed that just before noon today, Microsoft removed that article, perhaps for editing purposes. The link to the download itself however remained active. The Office service pack is not a beta; it is a complete release.

Early beta testing of XP SP3 revealed new security hardening features were put in place, and at least one group of researchers claims Windows Vista SP1 lags behind XP SP3 in tests involving Microsoft Office workloads. Those tests may not have been deployed using O2K7 SP1. Today's XP service pack download is a release candidate -- past the beta stage, but not yet ready to be declared a formal release for production systems.

Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate 1 and Microsoft Office Suite 2007 Service Pack 1 are now available through our FileForum.

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3:15 pm December 11, 2007 - The Knowledgebase article in question was back online by mid-afternoon Tuesday. In it was a link to a spreadsheet listing the bugs addressed by Office 2007 Service Pack 1.

Of the 455 bugs tackled, a full 104 -- 23 percent -- pertained to the Outlook e-mail client. 87 bug fixes (19%) pertained to Excel, while just 37 (8%) pertained to Word. 63 bug fixes pertained to the complete Office suite.