Windows XP SP3 Released to Manufacturing

Despite Microsoft’s obvious focus on selling Windows Vista to its customers, it hasn’t yet forgotten about all those people out there that still use Windows XP (personally, I use Windows XP MCE 2005). The company has confirmed it has finally ‘released to manufacturing’ the third service pack to Windows XP – 7 years after the operating system’s original release.Service Pack 3 contains little in the form of new features, and is more of a massive update and patch roll-up than anything else. According to PCMag, the only new features are Network Access Protection (for Server 2008 compatibility), ‘black hole‘ router detection, a more detailed Security Options control panel, FIPS 140-1 Level 1 compliant cryptography at the kernel level, and a new product activation scheme that allows you to install the operating system without first entering a product key. A more detailed breakdown of SP3’s contents can be found on the Microsoft website.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is pushed to customers in three steps:

  • 21st April: Released to manufacturing, OEM and enterprise customers.
  • 29th April: via Windows Update and as a stand-alone download for us normal people.
  • June 2008: Automatic Update distribution for home users.

I have been running the latest beta of SP3 for a few months now on my Windows XP installation (32bit) and I noticed little during my day-to-day use. No apparent performance hits or gains, no added instability, nothing. This is probably a good sign, as this is most likely the final service pack for Windows XP.

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