Straight from Microsoft's mouth at the worldwide partner conference on Monday is the company's (latest, and hopefully, final) pronouncement on when it plans to release Windows XP Service Pack 2 to manufacturing. Company officials are now saying August (just slightly later than the "late July" target date Microsoft's been using since earlier this summer). One of our tipsters says August 4 is the internal due date. Once the long-awaited update goes gold, it will still be a few weeks until most users will be able to get their hands on a copy.