Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta Overview
I found this document while looking for something else and thought people might be interested in it. It (obviously) discusses the changes we'll see with the upcoming SP1 for Vista. There are some "features" in the gold release that I'm excited to see updated.
One thing that doesn't receive much fanfare in this document is the addition of Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol. SSTP is similar in function to the PPTP VPN protocol that many small businesses use, but it runs over port 443 (HTTPS) exclusively. In our office, many of the consultants that work offsite cannot access the VPN, because the client's firewall disallows PPTP. The SSTP connection will look no different to the firewall than a secure connection to Ebay. On the server side, the most recent beta of Windows Server 2008 supports this. It will be interesting to see in action.
Also noteworthy on page 5, two Vista updates (link 1 link 2) are mentioned. The goal of these updates is to improve performance and reliability. This is only the second time I've seen them referenced, so I suspect a lot of people don't even know they exist.