Microsoft has finally released the finished version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to manufacturing. We've been writing about SP3 for nearly six months and speculating about its impact on Vista sales, but this is the real deal!

As Randall C. Kennedy observes in today's Enterprise Desktop, "enterprise IT is fascinated with SP3. ... Microsoft has been putting on the full court press with Vista SP1, yet all they hear from their customers is, 'That’s nice. So when will we see Service Pack 3 for XP?'"

The wait is over. SP3's list of features remains unchanged from the myriad pre-releases: Network Access Protection (NAP); Black Hole Router detection; Wireless Access Protection (WAP) 2 support; new cryptographic APIs; and so on. And "one of the more controversial SP3 features -- a minor (roughly 10 percent) performance boost over XP SP2 -- seems to have survived the RTM process."

Check out the blog, and while you're at it, sign the 'Save XP' petition today!

Posted by Caroline Craig on April 29, 2008 05:44 AM