Microsoft today released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 (6002.16670.090130) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public. You can grab the standalone installer package from the Microsoft Download Center for 32-bit five languages and 32-bit all languages, 64-bit five languages and 64-bit all languages, as well as Itanium five languages and Itanium all languages. If you have Vista in English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish, download the five languages package, otherwise get the larger "all language" version. There is also a five language and an all language .iso image available, as well as a patch that will allow you to get it via Windows Update. While this is a public release, it is still a Release Candidate, and Microsoft is recommending that the average customer "wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack" and reminding testers that "a Service Pack is not a feature release—we are not looking for new feature suggestions, only SP2 regressions, crashes, and confirmation of fixes we've made will be considered for this milestone.More at ; http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/sp2-rc-for-vista-and-server-2008-goes-public.ars
