Windows XP SP3 Released To Manufacturing

mike_diack was one of many readers to send word that Windows XP SP3 been released to manufacturing. It will be available to OEMs and enterprise customers on April 29. Here is a summary of features and changes. The company will wait till "early summer" to enable SP3 downloads through Automatic Updates.

Here's a possible link...

[Adam Zweimiller]

Windows XP SP3 rev. 5503 [mydigitallife.info]

April Fools Joke?

[naer_dinsul]

Is the fact that this was posted on April 1st a bad thing?

Re:So much service!

[aliquis]

Personally I wouldn't compare computer and console gaming, I like my RTS and Quake and neither works good on console I assume. Anyway, at a console you do indeed get gaming without a stupid OS ;D. So if there are any approriate time to mention console gaming this must be it.

Regarding lack of knowledge have no fear, today there are so many more users, documentation, forums, and what not, and support for various things have improved and the desktops are better and so on. For just using Ubuntu I doubt you need any knowledge at all, basic understanding on how the package manager works and you are done.

Nice work there Lou^h^h^hBill

[Linker3000]

Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3.pdf - 428 KB Download
Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3.xps - 634 KB Download

Direct X 10

[Satanboy]

Still no directX 10.

But at least I got some patches!

One question.

[Allnighterking]

Will it make it out before the proposed "EOL" for XP in June?

Re:RTM?

[realcoolguy425]

You sir have made me go log in for the first time in years to post a reply to Slashdot. Incorporating the only animal that can't jump, and Microsoft into a legendary parable... We need to invent new words to describe awesome.

what about drivers?

[sentientbrendan]

XP SP2 is ancient, and doesn't have tons of drivers for things as basic as SATA (for your harddrive), or new network interface cards. This makes win XP installation on newer machines a nightmare.

Are they going to be selling win XP SP3 cd's with SP3 and drivers?

As a side note, reading the download page and spec was pretty funny. They must have mentioned "XP SP3 doesn't contain new features" (it actually does contain new features if you read further) like 5 or 6 times. Someone is pretty scared that XP is going to kill Vista.

Re:So much service!

[blindd0t]

Though I love gaming, each month seems to bring me closer and closer to blowing away all three of my windows boxes and replacing them with a distro of Ubuntu or something similar. My lack of knowledge is the one thing keeping that at bay for now.

In case you didn't already know, the next version of Ubuntu comes out Thursday this week (April 24th 2008). Though I would recommend waiting until the initial rush is over and you can actually connect to one of the mirrors (this may take a few days to a week), this new version includes a Windows installer which allows you to install (and uninstall, if you so desire) Ubuntu without having to worry about partitions and other aspects of OS installation you might be uncomfortable with. Here's a link to where it's mentioned [ubuntu.com] on the Ubuntu site. :-)

Re:WGA required?

[CSMatt]

But will SP3 install WGA?

Re:RTM?

[Fast Thick Pants]

Very true, as long as you've updated the daylight saving time entries in the registry, have a third-party firewall, don't need Quicktime, and have kindly-written XP drivers for any newer hardware. The single greatest thing about XP was that Microsoft shipped it with a 9 in this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar

Of course you can do that yourself in Win2k.