Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management Mike Nash posted a new update on his blog on Friday about Microsoft’s plans of releasing Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

The new service pack for Vista is scheduled for Beta testing and evaluation on Wednesday, October 29. Nash wrote. The SP2’s final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality and they will need customer and partner feedback before setting the date of release.

The improvements are integrated into a single service pack covering both Windows Vista (client) and Windows Server 2008 (server) versions to minimize deployment and testing complexity.
In addition to previously released updates since the launch of Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2 contains changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards:

• Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.

• Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.

• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.

• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.

• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

Windows next OS version, “Windows 7” has no scheduled release yet. The announcement of its release will be tackled on next week’s (PDC) Professional Developer Conference.

The Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 2 release according to this post will be on the first half of 2009.