"After a disappointing showing by Windows Vista SP1, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS. Testing with OfficeBench showed a ~10% performance boost vs. the same configuration running under Windows XP with Service Pack 2."

This day-after-Thanksgiving, when many Americans are enjoying a day off and several others are at work goofing around on OSNews, we decided to ask you: what's your "killer app?" What's the one app you can't live without? Sound off in the comments - one app only!

"AROS has gained lots of bugfixes and improvements in the lastest weeks. For istance, Neil Cafferkey has corrected some important bugs is his beloved AROS Installer; Nic Andrews has worked on his RTL8139 network driver; and Robert Norris has fixed file notifications, which previously broke preferences, just to name three."

"wmii is a dynamic window manager for X11. It supports classic and dynamic window management with extended keyboard, mouse, and filesystem based remote control. It replaces the workspace paradigm with a new tagging approach. Its minimalist philosophy attempts not to exceed 10.000 lines of code (including all shipped utilities and libraries), to enforce simplicity and clarity." Version 3.6 has been released. Its little brother, dwm, has also seen a new release.

"We all appreciate that when we turn on our Linux systems they're pretty secure. Thanks to continuing improvements to SELinux, it is increasingly easy for users to take advantage of this powerful security tool. Read on to find an interview with Daniel Walsh, the principal developer of SELinux in Fedora from Red Hat, where he tells us more about what SELinux does and how it's improved in Fedora 8. At the end of the article are some screenshots which show-off the new policy creation GUI."

"File-sharing between Windows and Sun's OpenSolaris Unix platform is being bolstered through two projects at Sun. The OpenSolaris project: CIFS Server features server software source code that implements the CIFS protocol also known as Server Message Block, the standard for Windows file-sharing services, Sun said. The internal CIFS server enables Microsoft users to store and retrieve files on an OpenSolaris system, Sun said. This project and a related effort, CIFS client, improve the usefulness of OpenSolaris in data environments that serve NFS and CIFS clients, Sun said. Sun recently donated server source code that implements CIFS to the OpenSolaris Project."

KDE 4.0 RC1 has been released. "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality. While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase. The KDE Development Platform, comprising the basis for developing KDE applications, is frozen and is now of release quality." You want see Plasma panel? You get see Plasma panel!

The third beta of FreeBSD 7.0 has been released. I cannot seem to find any information on changes between the second beta and this one. Additionally, the release schedule doesn't even list a third beta.

"gOS is made by Everex, a mid-range PC vendor. It's based on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and runs the Enlightenment E17 interface instead of KDE or Gnome. Despite not being created by Google, the focus of gOS is Google's online applications such GMail, Google News, Google Maps, Google Calendar, YouTube, etc. It's a neat concept for a Linux distribution, but how practical is it? We'll find out in this review."

AnandTech takes a look at AMD's new Phenom. "If you were looking for a changing of the guard today it's just not going to happen. Phenom is, clock for clock, slower than Core 2 and the chips aren't yet yielding well enough to boost clock speeds above what Intel is capable of. While AMD just introduced its first 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz quad-core CPUs today, Intel previewed its first 3.2GHz quad-core chips. We were expecting Intel to retain the high end performance crown, but also expected AMD to chip away at the lower end of the quad-core market - today's launch confirms that Intel is still the king of the quad-core market."

Scott Guthrie has announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are now available for download and provides a tour of some of the new features. "Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 contain a ton of new functionality and improvements. Below are links to blog posts I've done myself as well as links to videos you can watch to learn more about it."

Geeks.com sent us in one of their consumer electronics, the Linux-based Archos 604 PMP for a whirl, and we surely gave it one. This 30 GB PMP is the fourth generation video product from Archos, one of the biggest names in that market.

Some testing by the exo.performance.network research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.

The Ubuntu team is happy to announce the first release of Ubuntu JeOS, Ubuntu JeOS 7.10. Pronounced "juice", Ubuntu JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) is an efficient variant of Ubuntu configured specifically for virtual appliances.