While Service Pack 1 looms somewhere in the far-off distance, Microsoft is keeping busy with patches and fixes for Windows Vista.  Today, they officially announced the availability of what many consider to be the first stages of what will eventually be SP1; the "performance and reliability" and "compatibility and reliability" patches.  They currently don't show up as an option in Windows Update and have to be downloaded manually, but that is likely to change come the next Patch Tuesday, August 14th.

Here are a few of the major fixes introduced by these patches:

• Explorer file transfer (copy/move) speed improved.
• Improves memory management performance.
• Offline file synchronization fixed.
• Numerous game hardware-related incompatibilities corrected.

Each patch may be downloaded separately from the Microsoft support site, but requires that you validate your installation of Vista before receiving the file.  While these are no longer beta patches, you should probably keep an eye to your favorite tech forums to see how others are getting along with the fixes before applying them yourself.

Download: Performance & Reliability (KB938979)
Download: Compatibility & Reliability (KB938194)