in my opinion, delaying sp3 is not going to get 1 person to switch from xp to vista. i have no idea what the problem is. the cut off the beta testers from sp3 when vista sp1 was shut down.

Personally, I feel it shows their commitment to get the product working the way it should.

Why rush - don't we all want quality? Of course, we will see if "quality" is what we get.

I don't see why everyone is getting worked up about the wait.

Rich wrote: "Why rush?"

Hi, Rich,

Isn't three-and-a-half years slow enough?

Joe

Joe;

Right On!

I have the RC1 Beta and glad I stored it away since MS doesn't have it available for the average "joe" now, unless they moved it to another link somewhere.

I also noticed since I upgraded my HP BlackBird 002 from Vista Ultimate to XP Professional, I installed the SP straight away along with Office 2007 SP1 and when I went to update the system utilizing the Windows Update, I had nothing to update from MS.

So, I am thinking, if there is still work on SP3, they're not releasing any updates for it.

Rich - you're serious?

XP SP3 is only supposed to be a roll-up of patches and hotfixes, with no new functionality.

One could argue that all of the components in SP3 have already received a lot of beta testing via Windows Update over the last three years, so other than consolidation, what is left for MS to do?

MJ Marshall - Are YOU serious?

XP SP3 is only supposed to be a roll-up of patches? Do you really believe that's all that SP's are made up of from Microsoft? Really? You need to do a little research before posting in my opinion.

Whose career at Microsoft depends on delivering SP3 on time? Would you want to be the product manager that delivers SP3 to rave reviews while the thinkers on top fume about keeping XP alive?

Joe, again , you chase after a service pack

I think you will occupied yourself for the rest 2008 as I am sure that many service packs will be relased in near future

SP1 for Windows Server 2008
SP1 for Office 2007
SP1 for SQL 2008
SP1 for Visual Studio 2008....

You are really the SPH (Service Pack Hunter)

To answer your question, Joe, yes, I'm anxious to see what level of performance improvements SP3 makes to Windows XP. The irony here is that Microsoft is releasing a service pack that makes the "old" Windows XP further surpass the performance of the "new" Windows Vista. I can sense and understand their hesitance. As a .NET developer at work, I use Vista. However, as a night time gamer, I run Windows XP and definitely want to install SP3, whenever it's released.

Joe I think we lost our friends in Redmond. They're off doing corporate politics in Whistler and not caring about user needs. If I were in a big business I'd be very very upset about this. I'd be paying my yearly fees and getting what? Vista? An OS I can't deploy because my in house apps won't run on it? Windows 2008 seems to have a mighty fine set of features, but guess what! I've been paying Windows XP fees for the last 3 and a half years (since SP2). What have I gotten for all that money? What will I be getting????

As long as the marketing geeks are at the helm of Microsoft's ship I don't believe this is going to happen. They'll continue to be at the helm as long as the shuv-ur-throat (OEM channel) and rent-a-soft (volume licensing) continues to exist. They'll show nice numbers like the Vista coupons for Vista sales we saw beginning 2007 and other nice marketing and sales studies. All this while the quality and structural design of Windows and all its satellite systems and services continues to diminish. Microsoft's monopolistic position is a threat to many in the industry, but above all it is a threat to itself.

Gerardo Tasistro wrote a lot of good stuff, including:
"Microsoft's monopolistic position is a threat to many in the industry, but above all it is a threat to itself."

Indeed.

The quandary of a monopoly that is faced with severe growth limitations and increasing competition does not paint a pretty picture.

In case Microsoft hasn't noticed, most companies do NOT have anywhere close to a US $250B market cap, most individuals do NOT have a net worth of tens of billions of dollars, and the Vista hardware upgrade requirements represent real costs and real barriers to wide-spread adoption for businesses. And it seems as if Microsoft really doesn't know this.

If Vista adoption is delayed, it gives Apple and Linux time and opportunity to grow.

If Apple continues to grow market share, and/or back-door deals with SCOG along with patent saber-rattling don't stop the spread of Linux, then XP SP3 is ready to help stem the tide of defections.

But if Apple stumbles and Microsoft can make their competition illegal, they can drive Vista and its DRM down our throats and don't want the competition from XP SP3 to slow the forced migration.

What to do? What to do?

Philosopher :What to do? What to do?
Exact, or To be or not to be? it is the Ms' doubt.

I liked this column (and found it more valuable) before it became so universally negative. Maybe pressuring MS to release a buggy service pack will provide more grist for the negativity mill that seems to prevail not only here, but throughout the computer press lately.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of press articles lauding XP at the expense of Vista. Given the halo around XP, who cares if the service pack is ever released? Are there problems waiting to be addressed?

People who are running Vista on current hardware are having great experiences. Can we hear a little about that, instead of a steady stream of articles about the poor guy who couldn't get it to run on his 486?

Pure speculation, but I would not be surprised if the release of XP SP3 coincided with XP being released back into the retail and OEM channels, with MS abandoning the strategy of trying to force the upgrade. Some time might be required to get the marketing and distribution channels ready.

It would not be the end of the world for MS to offer both systems as flagship systems. From 1995-2001 you basically had two OS- 9x and NT. We would go back to a two OS world with Windows 7 as a future unification point.

MS has got to do something about all the negativity around Vista, which appears to have hit a tipping point.

Joe,

You're a journalist right? Did you think it might be worth approaching the company for their perspective and including it in your story? You know, sort of a "balance" thing? Just a thought...

Joe, you were the same one rushing Vista SP1 a few months ago. Now its here and you are saying Microsoft hurried it? Interesting, being that SP1 for Vista was released under a normal schedule for Windows Service Packs.

You need to take into account that SP3 for XP will be last major update for the OS. It is assume Microsoft would want to get this right and ensure that it is tested to the max. We don't want to hear about unforseen glitch down the road or a patch required the day XP SP3 is released and you complaining why Microsoft rused XP SP3.

Joe;

For those who wish to hear something good about Vista x86 or x64 in which my personal testing on the HP/Voodoo BlackBird 002 which is truly the cream of the crop and there are, if any, better PC platforms available today -- right now, this moment that is.

My machine came delivered in a very nice crate and upon opening the system, I noticed the Vista operating system, the x86 version which I thought was amiss.

I played with it for a few days and then I eradicated the boggy OS and installed the x64 version to take advantage of the quad processors. I must admit that the performance perked up when SP1 was installed without a problem.

Running the barebone core, meaning I did not install any other feature except the required drivers, the system as powerful as the hardware is, seemed lacking.

I removed the OS and installed XP Professional x64 with RAID (striped) and loaded the XP drivers and the performance went through the roof. SP3 Beta release was also installed automatically in my "upgrade."

My bird utilizes the Intel® Core2™ Extreme Quad-Core 3.0GHz [QX9650]; 12MB of L2 cache; 1333MHz with 8 GB 1066MHz CORSAIR PC2-8500 DDR2 SDRAM SLI Ready

I am running in SLI two sweet nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX, with 768MB of GDDR3 SDRAM supports Dual-Link DVI

I have two 160GB 10,000 rpm SATA (Western Digital Raptor)in the specified RAID and the AGEIA PhysX™ 100 Series PCI-E Accelerator Card to run my astronomy program.

So I don't have DX 10.0 and since I don't play any games on this, but design my butt of with Adobe CS3 and video creation, who cares?

I've been running this configuration for some time since and I am very happy living life without Vista or IE 7.0 just fine.

I also know that I am in the top 1% of the PC Users in the world, but so be it -- For me, Vista flat sucks and there is no way anyone here can tall me, or show me different.

On a side note, I honestly believe that Vista SP1 was released nearly together with Windows Server 2008 because both products have relatively the same code base, thus both needed the kernal updates. Dollars to donuts, I bet the updates in Vista SP1 are part of the release edition of Windows Server 2008.

I installed XP SP3 V. 3311 . Installed with no issues, just took some time to install. I did not notice any dramatic increase in speed.

Likely due to the machine being a ancient E-Machines 400i with a 400 MHZ processor and the max allowed 256 MB RAM with Windows Xp Home with a almost 10 gig hard drive.

But the most important point, there were no performance or driver issues.

Can someone authoritatively explain the difference between as SP3 and a Security Rollup. Some products get SP3s, while others only get Security Rollups. What is the break-point? I know there was a big stink a while back when some product only got a Security Rollup.

Are you people trying to be funny or something?

While once in awhile I do run XP/SP2 for a couple of apps that I have not yet replaced in Linux. They are 3rd party windows apps, as that is the only benefit of windows, the 3rd party apps/games that can be run with it, not the bug ridden, virus invested OS itself. So I still would like to have XP as protected and stable as possible, which brings me to my point.

Will XP be "a better XP with SP3"? Faster? Perhaps. But that is not the only "improvement" one should look for in a service pack from M$. Look for as well as the "improvements," the back doors, wga, and drm that M$ might also be adding. Making XP look more like Vi$ta, is not an improvement either. For that reason, SP3 can only go on a "testing" hard drive installation here. Trust is not an option when dealing with M$.

Whose career at Microsoft depends on delivering SP3 on time? Would you want to be the product manager that delivers SP3 to rave reviews while the thinkers on top fume about keeping XP alive?

You're a journalist right? Did you think it might be worth approaching the company for their perspective and including it in your story? You know, sort of a "balance" thing? Just a thought...

The XP SP#3 Beta RC does improve and fix XP
I have not had any real bugs on 10 desktops.
It does have installation bugs on laptops.
I have been waiting for the service pack for 3 months!!!
And I will keep waiting rather than downgrade to Vista.

XP SP3 SHOWED PERFORNANCE ENHANCEMENT

Performed "clean install" of XP home
with SP3 and it seemed to improve
what I monitor for performance.
First used v3300 form thehotfix.com
and then v3311 from Microsoft.
WOW what an improvement...
...it is almost as "quick-on-the-click"
as my friend's Mac of seven years ago.

MEMORY MANAGEMENT
Physical memory is now managed
to maintain greater than 50% free
resulting in sustained quick loading
of apps and webpages...operating with
1 GB RAM + 3 GB P.F. = 4 GB Virtual Mem.
(An old principle, based upon observation,
is that "dynamic memory"
slows as it approaches half full
and "boggs" not much beyond 50% full
due to fragmentation:
the Swiss Cheese analogy.)

DEFRAGMENTATION
I use XP defragment at each startup
and HDD fragmentation seems improved.

I just tried the install process and now the computer will not boot up into windows. I tried booting into safe mode and it just goes into auto reboot mode and keeps on rebooting and shutting down. Is there any solution suggestions?

I am having the same problem with my HP. Any suggestions from someone?