Microsoft releases Office 2007 SP1

Is Microsoft turning a new leaf? It certainly seems that way. Consider this: today the company releases the first service packs for Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007, a whole quarter early. No, that's not a typo--the company beat its own estimated release date of Q1 2007. Both service packs have been rolled into one package, "the 2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 1" and unlike with most service packs, these won't be pushed out via Automatic Update immediately. Rather, they're available now from Microsoft's Download Center and will be released via Automatic Update "Some time three to six months from now." Office 2007 SP1 compiles all of the various fixes that the company has released over the last year by fixing bugs, improving performance and providing "incremental advances" to security.

For more on Office 2007 SP1:
- see this ZDnet blog entry