Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 officially RTM'd on Feb 4, 2008 . The RTM build was nothing but RC Refresh 2 code ; so some of them testers already had the RTM before they knew it. The testing part was really fun - I kinda liked it even. But then came the RTM gold bits , wasn't as pleasant as expected ; partly because us techies got the binary standalone installer for RTM not the Windows Update way. My system was a fully loaded Vista Ultimate with loads of installed software and loads more of tweaks - it was running on minimal services, which i suspect to be a partial cause of my 48 hour installation ordeal. The installation went on for a solid 36 hours (on an infinite cycle) before it failed and I reinstalled vista and i'm in the process of getting all the software back on.

Normal users have nothing to worry, your final two updates required to make the jump have been delivered in the previous patch Tuesday. You should expect SP1 to be delivered via Windows Update sometime in March/April.

Vista SP1 brings with it many tweaks including fixes for the infamous file transfer issues. And of course Ultimate users continue to get dust.

Update: Seems like I wasnt the only one having SP1 RTM install issues, and Microsoft has fixed them.  And here is more info on post SP performance.