In a monumental act of kindness, Microsoft said Monday that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) would be available to customers of the operating system in March.

Service packs are usually a collection of bug fixes and improvements that Microsoft puts out for major programs such as its operating systems.

According to a blog posting on now defunct windowsvistablog.com by Mike Nash of Microsoft’s Windows Product Management group:

SP1 also includes changes focused on improving the performance of Windows Vista in areas that impact the customer experience the most. For instance, with SP1, copying or moving files around your PC, your home network or your corporate network should now be much faster — up to 50% faster in some scenarios (according to our internal tests). In addition, on many kinds of hardware, resuming a Windows Vista-based PC from sleep is faster on Service Pack 1.

In December last year, PC World screwed Windows Vista as one of the biggest tech disappoinments of 2007.