Well, MS brought it out--but if you're not a bits/bytes type, use caution.
According to a company spokeswoman, Windows XP SP3 RC (release candidate) will be available only from the Microsoft Download Center. Unlike Vista SP1, which debuted last week, XP SP3 will not be soon added to Windows Update. In fact, the spokeswoman seemed to say SP3 wouldn't be offered to users via Microsoft's update service before the service pack is finished next year.
"XP SP3 2ill be added to WU [Windows Update] in 1H '08," she said in an e-mail late Tuesday.
The download weighed in at about 336MB, but when SP3 is offered through Windows Update, the installation file will be much smaller -- around 70MB.
Even though the release candidate can be installed by anyone running XP SP2, Microsoft warned off casual users from trying the preview. "As this is a release candidate, we strongly encourage only those who are comfortable installing pre-release code to download Windows XP SP3," said the spokeswoman.
Some benchmark users claim that SP3 is 10% faster than XP2.
Hmmmm.
There was a pretty funny parody story last week about how XP was a great upgrade to Vista.
ReplyDeleteI already installed Vista SP1 on my main machine, but I have SP3 now installed on XP running on my iMac in a virtual machine.