The house that Bill Gates built has begun sending out Vista SP2 beta invites. It doesn’t appear to add any major new features though it does improve upon some old ones. The internal search engine has been vastly improved. It also adds some bluetooth patches, support for Via’s 64 bit processor and a handful of other app compatibility updates. The invites will continue to be sent out for the next four weeks. No word on the release date of the final.

As usual, I didn’t get an invite. You don’t call. You don’t write. I’m beginning to think we aren’t friends anymore Microsoft.

The name says it all. "Precision" because of the clean lines and the ease in which you can finish your work. "Covet" because, well, other people will want it. "Mobile workstation" because it is one, and "M6400" because it just about costs $6,400.

Not quite. The unit will actually set you back $3,859. Sound pricey? It is, but check out what’s under the hood:

This nifty doodad comes packing a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo T940 CPU, Vista Business, a dual-layer DVD writer, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 160GB 7,200 RPM hard drive, NVIDIA’s 1GB Quadro FX 3700M GPU, a 2-megapixel webcam, WiFi, 9-cell battery and a 17-inch WUXGA LED-backlit display. Yowza. Optional features include SSD, WWAN, a Core 2 Quad CPU and 16GB of RAM.

Read more specs by clicking here. This is shaping up to be the Cadillac of mobile workstations.

We anxiously await Vista’s SP1 due out in January to rid us of the pain-in-the-neck Kill Switch that some diabolical MS engineer came up with.

While Vista will still haunt you with messages, it will no longer disable your OS. Microsoft plans to roll back WGA to where it might nag you, but will not block access to any installed programs or Windows features.

WGA senior product manger, Alex Kochis, who said, "Based on customer feedback, we will not reduce user functionality on systems determined to be non-genuine."

All Hail Microsoft! Well, maybe…

The first service pack for Windows Vista was reviewed by APCMag and it contains the usual bug fixes and performance tweaks. What’s new is the ability to create a recovery disk, plus a whole bunch of new install packages for Vista’s components. And that’s The Word.

Rumor has it that Microsoft is planning Vista’s very first service pack beta release in mid-July, with a final version of Vista SP1, codenamed "Fiji", hopefully for November.

Meanwhile, work continues on Windows Vienna.