Microsoft To Release XP SP3 Next Week

[alfhenrik]

Now that Windows Vista service pack 1 has been released, all eyes have shifted to Microsoft's plans for Windows XP service pack 3, the final package of updates for the trusty OS. And, according to at least one source, Microsoft will roll out XP SP3 next Monday.

Microsoft To Release XP SP3 Next Week (http://www.crn.com/software/206904757)

Sweet, seeing as I am still using XP on my old machine, this will be a welcome update. Even though it is only supposed to be a consolidation of all hotfixes since SP2, according to reviews it does give more of a speedboost than what SP1 for Vista did...:lol:

[dumdum]

So do this mean some cpu's are well optimized in this SP? I hope.

[alfhenrik]

It seems that there is a set schedule for the release of XP SP3 now...

With Service Pack 3 for Windows XP just over the horizon, we've managed to get our hands on the internal schedule for the release of the highly anticipated update to the aging operating system. As you can see in the list below, most of the stages will occur before the end of the month, though forced automatic updates won't land until June. This delay should give system administrators an ample amount of time to prepare for the upgrade or simply come up with an excuse for when things go awry.

* April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP
* April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers
* April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center
* June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates

XP SP3 Release dates (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/04/15/windows-xp-sp3-release-dates)

[Zenphic]

April 29th is the magic day! Hopefully it will bring some neat improvements to an already pretty good OS

[PP Mguire]

Pretty good? Best OS so far.

[ZhengHe]

Pretty good? Best OS so far.

At least compared to Vista. Seriously, what kind of operating system can possibly justify 10+ GB of HDD space. This is madness.

[Goliath182]

I personaly dont care about 10 gigs when youve got a whole terabyte of free space =D. Harddrives are getting bigger and if you havent done so already you will need a terabyte in the next few years if you plan on doing a lot of gaming.

[PP Mguire]

Well i have 660gig alone on my desktop, and a whole lot more on my server but size isnt the problem. Its the ram usage and performance decrease.

[ZhengHe]

I personaly dont care about 10 gigs when youve got a whole terabyte of free space =D. Harddrives are getting bigger and if you havent done so already you will need a terabyte in the next few years if you plan on doing a lot of gaming.

See the problem is a terabyte hardware is prohibitively expensive. You would be lucky to find one below $200, let alone a decent one. Now let's see you're the average consumer that doesn't game, benchmark, or do anything resource heavy. All do you do is surf the internet, use a few office documents, email, and a few other applications on a daily basis. You're a businessman or woman, and you want to outfit your office with a new set of computers.

Before Vista you could buy a computer with 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive 1.6 GHz processor and only the most rudimentary of additional hardware. It wouldn't cost you much, maybe $400 if you were careful and it would do everything you needed it to. Now here comes vista and it needs 2GB of RAM, at least a 60GB hard drive to make sure it doesn't fill up too soon, a much faster processor, graphics card, your base price just went up significantly.

Did I mention that most new computers still come standard with Vista, not to mention that identical hardware runs a whole lot slower on Vista with it's new GUI and a whole mess useless processes and equally files. Did I mention it's still buggy? How about how few games it works with as compared to XP. Perhaps the sheer volume of programs it has issues loading, even given their supposed Vista compatibility. In a year and a half it is going to be replaced anyway.

How about if you live in a third world country, or even a second world country. You were just able to start buying PCs for your business to expand into other regions and then here comes Vista. Of course they won't offer you anything besides it since outfitting a new computer with XP is too much of a bother. So much for that.

Well I seem to have gone on quite a rant. Anyway Vista does have some improvements, but the improvements are superficial and far outweighed by it's failings, even if you plan to game. In fact that is one of the only reasons to obtain Vista outright, unless you have no other choice in the matter. At least that's how I see it. I may buy more powerful hardware then the norm, but mitigating that by more resource hungry hardware? Who does that help, except perhaps hardware companies.

Alright, now I'm truly done.

[Goliath182]

If you where in a third world country you wouldnt buy pcs with Vista. You may want to do a little more reasearch with pc buying as you can still easily get XP factory installed. If you are a average consumer or a buisness then a 200 gig HDD should easily be enough. They dont need to install 10 gig games all the time and their programs are most often under 5 gigs. so even if you use 100 gigs for the os and the partition then you could install 20 programs at 5 gigs each easily.

[ZhengHe]

If you where in a third world country you wouldnt buy pcs with Vista. You may want to do a little more reasearch with pc buying as you can still easily get XP factory installed. If you are a average consumer or a buisness then a 200 gig HDD should easily be enough. They dont need to install 10 gig games all the time and their programs are most often under 5 gigs. so even if you use 100 gigs for the os and the partition then you could install 20 programs at 5 gigs each easily.

Suppose you're right. I was looking on some of the computer manufacturer sites and most of them provide XP installed for Emerging Countries, though uniformly on the least expensive desktops. On the other hand if you are looking for a laptop or a slightly better desktop you have a problem as many of them only come bundled only with Vista across the board.

Even given Vista's relative failure it still means that many consumers who find themselves in the middle are more restricted then they otherwise would be. Vista is significantly less efficient then XP and yet the more powerful hardware is uniformly bundled with it. That either leaves you the option of buying large number of low end systems, looking really hard for one that offers XP Professional, or building one yourself.

Although that has always been the case to some degree the inefficiency with which Vista uses it's resources only exacerbates the problem. Not only that, but it forces you to use significantly more energy to achieve the same result, which is to say it costs more money to achieve the same result. A 200GB hard drive should not be necessary to run any operating system, not for the next few years anyway. If you compare the size of Windows 98 (195 MB), Windows ME (600MB), Windows XP (1.7 GB), Windows Vista (10 GB) - more if you include updates and some other features. From that alone it's easy to see exactly how large of a size difference that means. You see that Vista has broken the trend and not in a positive way.

My verdict is simply this. Vista is too large, too resource hungry, too buggy, and too inefficient too balance out any of the improvements it may have over XP. While the entire computer industry has been heading toward greater efficiency and power Vista has accomplished neither. Since it is gradually becoming the de facto operating system for the world that greater inefficiency will permeate outward to all nations. To create an operating system that does the opposite is counter intuitive.

To put this in another context game manufacturers will need to create less resource intense games then they otherwise would have to capture a significant share of the market. Hardware manufacturers are forced into selling more powerful hardware in even the intermediate systems just to make sure it can handle Vista. Software manufacturers will need to be wary about making anything too powerful since it may not be able to run on even the above average system with Vista. The effects of an operating system like Vista, which fails in so many of the ways that it ought to succeed has extremely wide reaching consequences. It forces the whole industry, and the consumer to spend more time and money for the exact same thing. This when we saw from XP and even 98 that an operating system did not have to be massive and jam packed with media files in order to accomplish everything it needed to do.

Anyway I'm done. This thread isn't about what wrong with Vista or what's right about XP. It's about Service Pack 3 and I've already taken this topic too far off already. That is all.

[bobletman]

At least compared to Vista. Seriously, what kind of operating system can possibly justify 10+ GB of HDD space. This is madness.

Madness this is microsofttttttttttt.

Anyways cant wait to see what good improvements they bring.

[ZhengHe]

Madness this is microsofttttttttttt.

Anyways cant wait to see what good improvements they bring.

Yeah, Microsoft tends to work in cycles: Good OS - Bad OS - Good OS. That should mean that Windows 7 or whatever they choose to call it will be another good OS, with any luck.

[Goliath182]

Yeah, Microsoft tends to work in cycles: Good OS - Bad OS - Good OS. That should mean that Windows 7 or whatever they choose to call it will be another good OS, with any luck.

I never realized this but your right. XP was good and ME/2000 was horrible.

[jellyrole]

I skipped from Windows 98 to XP, so I never really had to deal with ME/2000. I really don't understand what you guys have against Vista, or why you keep complaining about it. It's a really cool OS, and I really like it.

[Goliath182]

I never complain about Vista. Ive said it before it runs awesome if you have up to date hardware.