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Last Tuesday, Microsoft quietly shipped its second major update to Windows Vista, Service Pack 2. Like last year’s Service Pack 1 for Vista, this download combines a few new features with many smaller bug fixes and other refinements.

An article on Microsoft’s TechNet site outlines the notable changes in this release. Many of them only apply to “enterprise” users, those who toil away on large corporate networks, but a few should make a difference at home. The two most important among them are probably SP2’s updated Windows Search 4.0, software to index and find files on your machine, and its Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, an upgraded package of WiFi and Bluetooth wireless-networking components.

That tech-support document also says SP2 should improve a Vista system’s responsiveness when displaying RSS Web-site updates in the Windows Sidebar and, if you use a WiFi Internet connection, after it awakes from sleep mode. And if your computer, unlike most, can write data to Blu-ray optical discs, SP2’s support for that option can free you from having to use a third-party disc-burning program.

For now, your only way to get SP2 is to download a standalone installer that, because it contains every component that you might conceivably need, plus versions of this update in five languages, will take a while to download: about 348 megabytes for the 32-bit edition (what most users will want), and 577 MB for its 64-bit edition.

In a few months, this update should begin to arrive in a condensed form, customized for your PC’s configuration, in Vista’s automatic Windows Update; Microsoft says the 32-bit auto-update download should be around 43 MB, while the 64-bit release should weigh in at roughly 60 MB.

I tested SP2 by loading it on a copy of Vista Home Premium that I’d put on a MacBook laptop, using Apple’s Boot Camp software, a few months ago. The install itself took about an hour and required one restart.

The only evident glitch came when Windows reported that a copy of the free Avira anti-virus program had “known compatibility issues”; clicking that dialog’s “Check for solutions online” button didn’t yield any fixes, but downloading the latest version from Avira’s site fixed the problem.

SP2’s benefits look less obvious on an initial inspection. It doesn’t seem to use any more or less memory or processor cycles than SP1-vintage Vista. Bluetooth networking seems a little simpler at the margins–I was able to send a file from the Vista system to a nearby Mac without any hassles, which is something of a first in my experience–but otherwise the only clue of SP2’s presence is a line in a system control panel.

A boring Windows update is nothing to complain about, especially considering how little care I’d taken to keep this MacBook’s Vista system in good condition. I hope that’s the case for everybody who installs this update–but, knowing the weird ways in which Windows can go bad, I can’t assure you that everybody will have the same experience.

Have you put SP2 on your own Vista system? Share your findings in the comments…

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