Microsoft won’t be releasing Service Pack 2 for Windows 7

Windows 8 comes out in just over 24 hours here in Australia, but that hasn’t stopped news of the current OS, Windows 7, from getting any news on the wire. The engineering team responsible for building and releasing service packs at the Redmond-based software maker has reportedly been told there won’t be another service pack for Windows 7.

This would make it the first time in multiple releases that Microsoft won’t push out a second major update. Windows XP received three service packs, Vista had two. Windows 7 was due for a service pack at any time now, but service packs are a huge pain for Microsoft as they require a lot of time, and effort to build.

It looks as though Microsoft wanted to have all hands on deck with Windows 8, rather than lose man hours to a service pack for Windows 7. Not having another service pack might tarnish the new-look Microsoft, as service packs are more of a convenience than anything else. Having sometimes hundreds of updates at once is not only time consuming, but annoying – when a single service pack can replace all that time, effort and multiple reboots.

It’s not known if Microsoft will eventually release a service pack, or if they’ll use this as an excuse to push users toward Windows 8 – but I think we’ll see a second service pack for Windows 7, sometime next year.

Source: The Register