Three-and-a-half years after the release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, which boasted a slew of intensive fixes and tweaks for the OS, Microsoft is now preparing to let loose its final XP service pack.
The folks in Redmond just announced public availability of the second XP SP3 release candidate, and we took it for a test drive. What do we think of it? Meh.
In all fairness, Microsoft has been working for months now to temper expectations about this pack of updates, which consists primarily of previously released fixes now bundled together for convenience. Meanwhile, the few new features delivered in SP3 are likely to go entirely unnoticed by most users.
Enhancements such as improved detection of so-called black hole routers (which silently drop packets during operation) is likely to please net admins, but will get little more than a shrug from all but the most die-hard end users.
Same goes for the newly integrated Network Access Protection and support for credentials security service providers, both of which exist mainly to enhance networking functionality with the forthcoming Windows Server 2008.
If you?re not an IT manager and you?ve been installing your Windows XP updates each week like a good dog, there are really only two features in XP SP3 worth worrying about: one good, the other questionable.
On the good side, Service Pack 3 updates the menu text in the security options control panel to make it more descriptive of the various options. This should make it easier for users to decide which settings to tweak and how. It?s an incredibly minor tweak, and one that?s easy to miss if you?re not looking very closely.
More dubious is the Windows Product Activation update, which makes the XP installation process more Vista-like. This means you?ll no longer be forced to input your Windows product activation key during installation (although you?ll still have to do so within 30 days or your OS will stop working).
However, it also means Windows XP will be tracking your hardware configuration in much the same way that Vista does, which could lead to your computer being disabled in the event that you change out fundamental components such as your motherboard or processor.
All things considered, Windows XP Service Pack 3 proves to be a fairly anticlimactic final release in the XP service pack line. It won?t blow up your computer, but it won?t make it very much better, either.
If, despite our tepid response to XP SP3, you're just itching to take it for a test drive yourself, you can download a script here that will enable you to get the service pack via Microsoft Update.
Be aware, however, that this is not the final release and may yet contain code that could be harmful to your PC. We only tried it on non-critical test machines, and we suggest you do the same.
User beware: If you use any 3rd party themes, SP3 will break them and you won't be able to use them again without rolling back to SP2.
Sounds like we should wait for the final release of SP3 then.
In the mean time, I'll keep Windows tweaking and adding my tips on
http://PCWizKid.blogspot.com
Cheers
PCWizKid
Who cares about xp sp3? Just switch to Vista! I'm running Vista Home Premium on a 2 year old HP dv5000t w/ 1.86 ghz core SOLO processor, 2 gigs of ram (the only thing i had to upgrade, took 5 mins and $50), nVidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics w/ 128 mb ram. Vista runs so smoothly, runs all my apps, and does everything xp did, but better.No problems installing, everything was up and running in 4 hours, including dual booting xp (just in case). I've since replaced the xp with linux.
Be very careful of this release, I tried to installed xp sp3 canidate 2 on my system and it took over two hours ,not only was it bogging down the computer but,it created instabilities in all my app's. I finally gave up and restored it to just before the install.Thank but no thanks ,Microsoft....
Poor Microsoft can't catch a break. I'd ruthlessly bash 'em too, but I make a great living as a software developer targeting the Microsoft .NET framework, so I hope and pray that they do more good things than bad.
The hardware tracking in Vista and that's now going to be in XP, is a real drag for people like me who use VMWare. Sometimes moving a VMWare image from one machine to another (One of the big benefits of VMWare), causes Windows to cry out for reactivation. I can't imagine that this change will make that any better.
I'd also like to throw in my 2 cents worth regarding Vista. I have a new laptop that is running Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and it freakin' screams. It's waaay faster than my quad-core desktop running 32-bit Vista. My laptop now runs VMWare images faster than my desktop runs the native OS. My next goal is to bump my desktop to 8-GB of RAM and upgrade it to-bit Vista. I have Vista Service Pack 1, but am afraid to apply it, since my machine is running so great.