My hard drive was in an absolute frenzy this morning and churned away for hours.  It turned out to be the arrival of XP Service Pack 3.  Despite a lot of initial hostility to Ser Pack 2 I decided to go for it anyway.

No problems so far except that it messed up the monitor display but it was easily fixed by hitting the Auto Set up button.

What have you been doing? SP3's been here for months, and is (or in my case was) a no-brainer since XP is now officially a dead product, with the arrival of Vista.

As the last update and fix for XP, SP3 has to go in ASAP, and apart from the size and time, produced no problems. All programs ran as normal, and there haven't been any hiccups since it arrived. It did include everything from SP2, and many silent fixes that will allow XP to last longer as Vista is rolled out.

I do remember all the griping around the net user groups when SP2 was introduced, but we never had any of the supposed problems when rolling it out, and at that time I was in command of dozens of PC scattered around the land.

I suspect the problems with SP2 were more hype and hostility to the changes etc that MS made to XP, rather than any real problems suffered by real people. The only folk I saw with problems were those that liked to spend more time fiddling with their PCs than using them to actually run software and achieve anything with them.

Quoted from Apollo

a no-brainer since XP is now officially a dead product, with the arrival of Vista.

It would seem that there is a Band of XP Brothers (and possibly even Sisters) still out there demanding hardware with their favourite O.S. pre-installed as this Comet advertisement in yesterday's Daily Record illustrates.



I am one of that band.  

Sorry, it's all down to official terminology

Here's the official clarification of what the words mean:

April 29, 2008  Concerned that customers are confusing the impending end of Windows XP retail availability with the end of support, Microsoft Corp. has reminded users that the aged operating system will be supported until early April 2014.

Jared Proudfoot, a manager in Microsoft's support life cycle group, reiterated the final support dates for Windows XP in a post to a company blog.

"Recently, there have been a number of posts in the blogosphere about Windows XP and the upcoming end of direct OEM and retail license availability," said Proudfoot. "Some people are interpreting this as the end of support for Windows XP."

Not so, Proudfoot said. Windows XP will remain in what Microsoft calls "mainstream support" to April 14, 2009, and continue in "extended support" though April 8, 2014, he added. The former delivers free fixes -- for both security patches and other bug fixes -- to everyone. During the latter, all users receive security updates, but nonsecurity hot fixes are given only to companies that have signed support contracts with Microsoft.

Those are not new dates, Proudfoot reminded customers last week. In early 2007, for instance, Microsoft extended support for Windows XP Home and XP Media Center to the 2009 and 2014 dates to match those already set for Windows XP Professional.

Proudfoot reminded customers that the support timelines -- nearly 13 years altogether from the 2001 launch of the operating system to the 2014 drop-dead date for extended support -- are not the run-of-the-mill. "Supporting products for this length of time is not something that is typical in the software industry," he said. Normally, Microsoft supports a product for 10 years: the first five as mainstream, the second five as extended.

Although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seemed to say last week that the company might reconsider the decision to end retail and large computer-maker availability of XP on June 30, the company later reconfirmed the date as its current plan.

Some resellers, however, have announced that they will factory-install XP Professional on new machines after June 30 by taking advantage of Windows Vista's "downgrade" rights.

Don't get me wrong, I happen to think XP is a fine OS, but it's now distinctly out of date when compared to Vista (which I don't have, and probably won't for some time), and when related to what PCs and software in integrated systems can do, especially now that PCs and multimedia, audio, video and imaging, are all converging.

Only five years ago I had designed a complete automated home system that integrated the electrical systems of the house - lighting, heating, security etc - together with the audio and video systems, and the computing system with the internet and phone system, including mobile phone. One of the neatest tricks it played was to alert the owner if someone rang the doorbell - they could "answer" the door wit their mobile phone, and choose to hold a conversation with the person at the door, who would not know that the owner was miles away, and not in the house. I still have a pile of the hardware that was to be used, because more than half of it was obsolete and would have to have been replaced before the work was done. Today, nearly 80% of the system would need to be upgraded, would do more, and cost less than the original.

I also have PCs running Win98, but don't use them any longer for two reasons: 1. Something is trashed in the install, and I just can't be bothered re-installing Win98 yet again, and 2. I've used XP only for so long now, Win98 feels terrible to use, even though in some ways the two are little different in real-life use.

I'm sure the same would/will be true of Vista, as there is much truth in the old saying "You don't miss what you never had".

Apollo I have no idea why SP3 has only just arrived at chez Fox.  The machine is set up for automatic updates.  My only thought on the subject is that it runs an OEM version of windows and possibly the updates come from the manufacturer ( E Machines ) after they have suitably modified it.

Rubbish I can hear you cry but when my old machine broke down the local repair shop tried 3 times to load standard ME on the machine and it crashed instantly every time.   When I took the CD that came with the machine into  the shop it loaded and has run perfectly ever since.   Im still use it for non internet purposes.

My neighbour, ex IBM had horrendous problems with SP2 but he did tend to test everything to destruction whereas I just accept whatever comes up on the screen. So you may be correct in your assertion.  Mind you magazines at the time were making a lot of it too.

Beats me why it should have arrived late.

The content is to the core code from Microsoft, so not touched by the manufacturer. They just insert their customisation by way of adverts and force their name to pop into titles, and add useless "free" software to steer the uneducated user back to them. Stuff, which I have found is almost impossible to delete or uninstall without worry of breaking something they've integrated into.

It'd probably nothing more peculiar than the download being rather large, and the utility will have downloaded it in bits whenever the computer was on, then "re-assembled" them when the job was done, and then waited for the thing to have been on long enough to launch the update one day.

Yes, I remember the magazines thrashed SP2 back at the time it was launched, and many "respected" writers prophesied Gloom & Doom for anyone foolish enough to accept and install the download.

I waited a full 6 months after the first issue of SP2 because of this doom-mongering, but after this period Microsoft issued neither a new and revised SP2, or a pack of fixes to correct all the "problems" the naysayers had foretold.

After that delay, I downloaded and installed the same package I could have had 6 months earlier, installed it with no problem, dead programmes, dead PC, crashing of systems or any of the hassles the magazine writers had promised.

And people wonder why I talk of things like Microsoft and Google bashing. I have come to the conclusion that the problem is with the success of others for these writers (and the need to keep their job and attract readers), and not any inherent problems with the products concerned - which can have the odd problem, like anything else.

What can I say?  One of the magazines of the time had a free CD containing SP2.  I stuck it in, followed the instructions and had no problems at all.  I guess I was lucky.  I wasn't too concerned as I knew I could reset the machine to an earlier date and effectively delete SP2 in the event of problems.