SP3 crashes the party
Microsoft's third service pack for Windows XP was welcomed by many but as seems the current fashion with Microsoft and their operating systems, deployment has stuttered.
As Windows XP nears its end of sales life, it seemed a rather odd decision to release a service pack which will rekindle an already fierce flame for the aging operating system.
According to John Curran, Director, Windows Client Group, Microsoft UK, the release of SP3 is in line with a typical Microsoft support schedule. Curran added that it is “fairly standard for Microsoft to release a final service pack as a product nears its sales life.”
When specifically questioned whether there would be another service pack for XP he would only say that they do not speculate on the release of such patches.
Regardless of whether XP will see another service pack or not, the release of SP3 was seen by many as shot against Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista. Curran says he has "no evidence that the release of SP3 is affecting sales of Vista". Curren continues saying that adoption, especially in the UK, is "slightly ahead" of adoption curves for previous Microsoft operating systems.
Within the first three years of XP's life, two service packs were released, with SP2 being touted as more than just a service pack. SP3 however, was released a further three years down the line. According to Curran these packs are released "as appropriate". Curran says the aim is to make it easy for all users, from consumers to enterprise to deploy XP with the latest patches and features.
Performance gains
Some users are reporting slight performance gains after installing the latest service pack and according to Curran that is down to some "minor enhancements in the code". However he continues, saying there is "no fundamentally new functionality" in SP3 with the majority of the service pack being a roll-up of patches.
The deployment of SP3 through it's various stages (release to manufacturing, re-distributable download and then finallly through Windows Update) seemed to be going smoothly until stories surfaced of users on some AMD machines having problems.
“Microsoft are aware of the problem and are taking it very seriously.”The problem caused machines to continually reboot due to crashing during the booting process. Curran was unwilling to comment on the specific problem but added that “Microsoft are aware of the problem and are taking it very seriously.” Asked whether these problems are a result of meeting a deadline for release, Curran stated that quality and user experience metrics had to be met before anything would get released.
SP3 does breathe new life into an ageing operating system, providing increased viability for consumers and enterprise alike. Microsoft should be commended for releasing SP3 at this time, if not sooner, especially since it has the potential to be a bit of an own-goal if it further prevents users from upgrading to Vista.
However not catching the automatic reboot problem and having to delay the whole thing due to the DRMS issue could have just undone any goodwill that was heading Microsoft's way.
