Following the release of the first public tests of Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server Service Pack 2, the trial version of the service packs -designed to improve support for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Blu-ray devices - is now available for free download from Microsoft’s TechNet Web site.

Users who wish to test the service packs should do so inside safe, virtual environments. About this, the product manager, Mike Nash, wrote on his blog: “We encourage you to install the beta as soon as you can; your feedback will help us to ship a solid and stable service pack for Windows Vista.”

In the case of Vista SP2 beta, Virtual PC 2007 SP1 should be used to first create a fully working virtual machine around Vista SP1. Thereafter, the SP2 download has to be used to upgrade that VM. For the WS2K8 SP2 beta, users can try VMRCplus - a freebie utility from Microsoft that manages virtual server machines created with Virtual Server 2005 R2.

However, Hyper-V integration, now a key feature of WS2K8 SP2, cannot be tested in a virtual environment - to test it, a 64-bit CPU that uses hardware-based Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is needed. The best shot for testing this feature is to use a late-model 64-bit Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processor.

According to Nash, the service pack includes “support for new types of hardware and emerging standards that will grow in importance in the coming months.”