Today I downloaded the Windows XP Service pack 3 from Microsoft. It’s a heavy coming in at 330 megabytes but hopefully its worth it. It’s only a beta version, with the final edition expected sometime this year . Read on for my full review.
On my first attempt at installing it, I was rejected with Microsoft wanting me on AC power before I could continue (Possibly to avoid corrupting the system if the battery goes flat halfway through the installation). As I clearly wasn’t going to get anywhere while on my battery I put the installation aside for the next few hours.
Installing the Service Pack was the same as any other. After extracting the files and agreeing to the terms of use it was ready to install. Installing it took a little while for me (Around half an hour) and like any other service pack, it asked me to restart at the end.
The bootup time was slightly faster then before and after it had, it promoted me to turn on automatic updates (Because I previously had them disabled). The welcome screen stayed on for a lot longer then normal, but that could have just been because it was its first time starting up with Service Pack 3. After I saw my desktop2 instances of the Command Prompt opened before disappearing a few seconds later. Not too soon after that, automatic updates popped up and told me I had new updates. These turned out to the malicious software tools that Microsoft seem to release each month.
So far I haven’t noticed any visual differences, but the speed in opening folders seems to be a bit faster (Or I could be paranoid). This release won’t be as big as service pack 2 (which added a redesigned Wireless manager, a improved firewall and the Windows Security Center). It does include some new features like the ability to provide a Windows key after its installed (This feature will only be available on a full version of Windows XP and not the stand alone service pack), changes to the kernel and new networking features (which are already available in Windows Vista).
It didn’t install Internet Explorer 7 over the top of version 6, which is good for all Web Developers out there and is good news to the people who keep having to reinstall Windows as it minimises the amount of updates you have to apply.
Sources: Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite
2 Comments
So, how’s going? I am a linux user myself but I’m just curious about how the SP3 is actually performing.
It went alright, I’ve since upgraded to Vista but while I was using it, it felt no different - just faster