During the Q&A portion of an earnings conference call Tuesday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini was asked how Vista sales would impact his company's 2007 sales projections. Otellini began his answer with the by-now-standard explanation that enterprises haven't jumped to the new operating system.

"Most companies will act like Intel," he said. "They're doing some pilots and testing today."

But as he continued, he named a rough release date for Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). "But the [Vista] deployment [in enterprises] will actually happen when the Service Pack gets released in the fourth quarter time frame, probably the October-November time frame," said Otellini.

Although Microsoft has confirmed that SP1 is in the works, it has refused to name a release date or peg it to a particular quarter. That didn't change -- even after Otellini's leak.

"It's too early to provide any firm date range for SP1's delivery," a company spokeswoman said today. "We will continue to take customer feedback from programs like the TAP [Technology Adoption Program], and will ultimately determine an official delivery date as the service pack is nearer to completion."

The spokeswoman did not reply to a request to confirm the accuracy of Ortellin's SP1 schedule.

Microsoft's stance on SP1, said one analyst, is incomprehensible. "I don't get that logic," said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash. research firm.

"If customers want dates that they can plan around for major releases [of Windows], why wouldn't they want the same consistency and ability to plan for service packs?"

Microsoft does publish what it calls the "Windows Service Pack Road Map" on its Web site, but Vista is not represented, and future service packs for currently-supported OSes such as Windows XP are broadly drawn by naming a half-year span, not a month or quarter.

"Calling that a 'road map' is an embarrassment," said Cherry. "They should be much more transparent on service packs, and that includes whether they're going to do them or not. There may be customers holding back on Vista for SP1, but the bigger story is that service packs are like everything else, and if Microsoft wants to be transparent, they need to provide a guideline as to when they'll release."