PC World blurb on XP SP3

[Firebytes]

According to a small article in the latest issue of PC World, SP3 offers only two noteworthy changes for most users; if you have been good about installing updates as they have arrived in the past. They advise that one change is a good thing and one...well, not so much.

The first change mentioned is that the menu text in the security options control panel has been updated to describe the options better. (bleh)

The second change is that Windows XP will now track your hardware configuration and may disable your PC if you make a change such as replacing the motherboard. :thumbd:

I hadn't heard this before or if I had I forgot about it. So, now I'm not really looking forward to SP3 anymore.

[Hairy Coo]

There have been other threads about XPsp3.

You will find that most users ,me included,find no appreciable difference.

Win Os not running with substantially different hardware is not new.

[Firebytes]

So the change in SP3 to monitor hardware configs and disable users' systems if major changes are made (until calling and validating Windows again, I assume) was already known? I guess I missed that part in the other discussions.

[Hairy Coo]

Re-reading your post,I'm not sure about disabling your current system,only if a new system is setup using new specified hardware .

See your point-would be ridiculous!!

[LockBox]

I agree - the fact they can basically shut you down is reason enough to not update to Service Pack 3. Can Microsoft do anything these days without going from bad to worse? It appears they are blowing Vista off and working 24/7 for a faster release of Windows 7. But, who will want Windows 7 if they can't give us a level of confidence in their own competence? I think XP will be the last operating system worth having. The next great operating sytem is already on your computer now: the browser. The future is in the cloud.

[EASTER]

-{ Quote: " I think XP will be the last operating system worth having." }-

I been saying this same thing all along. XP may just turn out to be the last M$ O/S that ends up being the best, and security vendors have seemed to spare no expense or effort to make it as secure as any O/S is ever been before and perhaps even after.

I do not like the policy or marketing route microsoft is determined to running headlong down these days, they turn their back on 98/Me before re-writing it once more and reclaiming some customer confidence in it they lost when they just throwed in the towel.

They played name games, first with announcing Longhorn as the next best and greatest O/S only to change it to Vista then all heck broke loose when drivers and programs failed to work that customers had invested hard earnings in including scanners & printers, not to mention the other many issues that caused a flood of frustration and returns.

Now they hint at Windows 7 which at one point was rumoured to be named Vienna but while still in lab releasing SP3 which many are now skeptical on what will happen to their privacy or even machine should microsoft decide to take it down remotely like a RAT! :argh:

And while were on the subject, can someone, anyone please explain why thi so-called O/S giant has the absolute slowest servers ever devised knowing full well it has to contend with a global audience accessing it for knowledge base as well as basic info and downloads which are slow as 80 day old molasses and even some Chinese Servers which have a history of snail pace connections are actually faster these days?

No wonder malware & exploits outpaces M$ because their servers and the servers of many millions of huge draws are infinitely faster at even the basics such as loading pages and such, while ever since Windows 95, Microsoft's Website is stuck in the 1990's.

No rant, just the facts please.

[lucas1985]

-{ Quote: "can someone, anyone please explain why thi so-called O/S giant has the absolute slowest servers ever devised knowing full well it has to contend with a global audience accessing it for knowledge base as well as basic info and downloads which are slow as 80 day old molasses and even some Chinese Servers which have a history of snail pace connections are actually faster these days?" }-
Actually, Microsoft's servers (with the help of Akamai technologies) are one of the fastest to download files from, even on peak hours.

ReactOS (http://www.reactos.org/) is the future of the NT branch of OSes.

[EASTER]

-{ Quote: "Actually, Microsoft's servers (with the help of Akamai technologies) are one of the fastest to download files from, even on peak hours.

ReactOS (http://www.reactos.org/) is the future of the NT branch of OSes." }-

Not for dial up they're not.

[Hairy Coo]

Downloads from Microsoft are probably the fastest on the net.

Even Down Under and despite the lengthy submarine cabling and distance involved,
I am comfortably achieving around 1.1mbps,with an actual line speed of say 9mbps.

This means I could download the complete SP3 update of 315mb in around 5 minutes.

Well done,Microsoft.

[Hairy Coo]

-{ Quote: "

The second change is that Windows XP will now track your hardware configuration and may disable your PC if you make a change such as replacing the motherboard. " }-

Thinking about this again-it always was the case for XP .

I do remember I tried to install XP2 on a different motherboard some time ago but couldnt.

Whilst this can be very irritating,Microsoft obviously have sound anti piracy reasons for this.

Assuming you have a legitimate version,the next step is a phone call to the local Microsoft office to get an authorization-no big deal as it happens so infrequently.

[Firebytes]

Thanks for the info Hairy Coo. The article makes it sound like the disabling part is something new.

[lucas1985]

-{ Quote: "Not for dial up they're not." }-
You might have an ISP or local problem.

[EASTER]

-{ Quote: "You might have an ISP or local problem." }-

It wouldn't be the first time. LoL

Still even when i had wireless hi-speed i always got frustrated at the slow loading of Microsoft's site. I dunno, maybe thats just the way they work.

Thank goodness i don't use auto updates because i would never get all those patches on in a year. :)

[markymoo]

-{ Quote: " It appears they are blowing Vista off and working 24/7 for a faster release of Windows 7. But, who will want Windows 7 if they can't give us a level of confidence in their own competence? " }-

That's is not what i am now hearing. Windows 7 is going to be an update to Vista!

[DVD+R]

SP3 is ****! Its a Placebo of what is and what should never be, And in Preacticality SP3 "should never be!" Dont go rushing to install it once its finally released, because unless you have The Highest performing CPU/Motherboard/Hard Drive Etc... you wont notice a damn thing except for an extra GIG or 2 used space on your hard drive. SP3 Isnt going to make the Weak into the Mighty, Remember Samson? of Samson and Delilah? once she cut of his hair he was done for....vulnerable, and bassically powerless. Well let me make one thing perfectly clear here..SP3 is the Delilah in this case Its devious aclaims to providing further stability make me as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The only thing SP3 is going to do is at the most, enhance the already flaws security in Internet Explorer. As for speeding up your system! Are you really that Naive to Believe the Impossible :dry: Software never has, nor never will do this, its whats under the Hood that counts, not the fuel you put in it. :shifty:

[EASTER]

-{ Quote: "SP3 is ****! Its a Placebo of what is and what should never be, And in Preacticality SP3 "should never be!" Dont go rushing to install it once its finally released, because unless you have The Highest performing CPU/Motherboard/Hard Drive Etc... you wont notice a damn thing except for an extra GIG or 2 used space on your hard drive. SP3 Isnt going to make the Weak into the Mighty, Remember Samson? of Samson and Delilah? once she cut of his hair he was done for....vulnerable, and bassically powerless. Well let me make one thing perfectly clear here..SP3 is the Delilah in this case Its devious aclaims to providing further stability make me as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The only thing SP3 is going to do is at the most, enhance the already flaws security in Internet Explorer. As for speeding up your system! Are you really that Naive to Believe the Impossible :dry: Software never has, nor never will do this, its whats under the Hood that counts, not the fuel you put in it. :shifty:" }-

That collection of statements just sold me if there was any doubts that i ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT be adding it to my system. It took a long time to fine tune many of my systems and just add SP2 against my better judgement, but as for SP3, theres NO WAY i'll be tempted to touch it with an 80 foot pole.

I'm sure my phone will be ringing off the hook when my clients do install it though, and so whats's a guy to suggest to them then?

[markymoo]

What was you expecting? It all mainly a collection of previous updates which you have anyway. It makes it compatible with Server 2008 and more black hole protection and a couple tiny others. That's It!

[EASTER]

You know, i understand to a point that M$ is also contigent to some secrecy due to it's US Government affiliation such as contractual agreements. That's no secret if anyone seen Bill Gates one-hour hearing before a recent Congress committee last week. I watched it on Cable. Knowing it was a public hearing of course the committee members played dumb a lot. So what else is new right?

But in the Redford Laboratory that deals with public O/S distributions one can't help but to harbor valid disappointment that they don't take more interest then they do where it involves their public released O/S's to come up with something far better then's proposed for SP3 as it stands ATM.

After all Windows is a great skeleton platform to experiment with and many new ideas have blossomed from it's use.

So it behooves me to nick pick at them like i do because they surely could do much better in way of improvements, but then i'm reminded again, in M$'s world, what do you expect for free right?

Compare Microsoft's Stock Price to Google's, miles apart yet M$ is supposedly a technology leader.

Just a lowly opinion from a loyal supporter of Windows for wherever it may lead.

[C.S.J]

XP is a great OS, however...

Vista (to me) is a nice improvement on XP, especially for higher end machines.

however, XP will always be faster than Vista regarding performance.

i hear XP3 offers greater speed in performance.

[appster]

Per Computerworld:
-{ Quote: "What's new in XP SP3? As befits a service pack, especially the last of its kind, SP3 is mostly about patches and hotfixes and other updates that have been issued incrementally since 2004 when Microsoft pushed Windows XP SP2 out the door.

But there are some new features. Most notably, it appears that Microsoft has kept its promise to upgrade the random number generator. Last November, remember, a team of Israeli researchers, led by Benny Pinkas at the University of Haifa, argued that attackers could exploit a weakness in Windows 2000's pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to predict encryption keys. After some hemming and hawing, Microsoft acknowledged that Windows XP shared the bug, and said it would fix the flaw in SP3.

In the release notes, under the heading of "Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module," Microsoft said that SP3 now "implements and supports the SHA2 hashing algorithms (SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512) in X.509 certificate validation." And that the "Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1 standard has been replaced by FIPS 140-2, and these modules have been validated and certified according to this standard."

FIPS, which stands for Federal Information Processing, is a U.S. government security standard. " }-
But where's the beef with SP3? ...even before SP3, XP is a solid OS that a large majority of Windows users prefer to Vista. If anyone wants to knock a Windows Service Pack, I say give Vista's SP1 a shot! ;)

[ASpace]

Vista is nice improvement to everybody and everything , no matter what some say . Vista is much faster by itself (or if it isn't faster , at least it doesn't leave you with the impression anything is being slowed down) .

About the resourses - every Microsoft OS has always required higher and higher . The world doesn't start from XP . The same was with 98 , then 2000 , then XP . You cannot run Windows XP on computer specifications for Win 98 or 2000 - or if you can - it is the bare minimum

The same is valid for Vista . You can't run it on XP designed computer . Again - if you have first bought your first computer in 2000 , 2001 or after that , it doesn't mean that before 2001 there were no OSes .

You can upgrade your machine as much as possible and then tell stories how XP rocks . Of course but it is your computer specs that rock . If you have 4 GBs RAM and *extra cool* processor , Windows 2000 will theoritically be even faster than XP because its requirements are much lower. However , practically , it may not even install on some modern computers because of driver incompatibility and lack of them as a whole.

Again practially Vista (or any THE NEWER OS) will early or later become more popular and more used than the previous one due to many reasons - some of them : new functions , more user-friendly , vendors stopping support of old ones , hardware vendors pushing the newer OS , etc.


As for Windows XP SP3 - For sure it will add some extra 900 Mbs on your computer but what are they for your *super fast XP* computers . Definitely you have much more than 1 Gb free on your hard disk.

For me personally the best advantage of SP3 is that when we do reinstallation of XP (for clients' computers) , we can now install SP3 directly instead of about 100 separate updates released post-SP2 . Installing a SP is faster than downloading and installing all the updates - it saves us time and efforts. Of course there are many other advantages of having the new SP. :thumb:

[EASTER]

-{ Quote: "Per Computerworld:

But where's the beef with SP3? ...even before SP3, XP is a solid OS that a large majority of Windows users prefer to Vista. If anyone wants to knock a Windows Service Pack I say give Vista's SP1 a shot! ;)" }-

I keep one XP Pro without any Service Packs and that puppy is quick as lightning and i can get plenty of work done at half the time a SP2, so there is definitely a performance hit that comes along with these service packs if nothing else from the pure quantity of additional files it adds to the disk system IMO.

[gerardwil]

-{ Quote: "

For me personally the best advantage of SP3 is that when we do reinstallation of XP (for clients' computers) , we can now install SP3 directly instead of about 100 separate updates released post-SP2 . Installing a SP is faster than downloading and installing all the updates - it saves us time and efforts. Of course there are many other advantages of having the new SP. :thumb:" }-

That is what I am doing now as well, at most I miss one patch day. Everything burned on a disk.
(No SP3 here yet)

Gerard

[19monty64]

My only beef with SP3 is that it disabled my "Royale Remixed Theme" which couldn't be re-installed until SP3 was removed???

[argus tuft]

Try repatching your uxtheme.dll.

[markymoo]

@Easter

They not going to do anything major with XP. You won't get anything happening on XP now except compatibility and fixes. It's already out of date in MS's eyes. They gone as far as they can with it's design. They can't make it look too good as it be more embarassment with Vista. They out to make money at the end of the day. I don't have a problem with XP it runs fast enough and stable.