Rumour control: Windows XP Service Pack 3 this month

Posted at: 2:56am 16th April 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Final add-on for classic operating system could be out this month, but it won’t add much that you won’t have already

Windows Vista may have been out for almost a year and a half, but a surprising amount of people are still clinging to their beloved copy of Windows XP, and are hoping for some new goodies in the next service pack. The good news is that the next XP service pack could be out this month.

Neowin claims to have got hold of an internal Microsoft memo detailing the release schedule, with OEMs getting the service pack on 21 April, while it will be made available to Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center on 29 April. Finally, the service pack is apparently scheduled to be made available via Automatic Updates on 10 June.

The bad news, however, is that Microsoft isn’t planning to add much that you can’t already get from Windows Update. Microsoft describes the service pack as ‘a small number of new enhancements, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.’ It also says that it’s ‘not adding significant Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP through SP3,’ and that the new service pack won’t include Internet Explorer 7.

One Vista feature that will be included is Network Access Protection (NAP), which is also available in Windows Server 2008. This basically allows you to create a computer ‘health’ profile for your network, which ensures that computers not meeting those requirements won’t be allowed to share assets over the network. As well as this, the service pack will include all of the hundreds of updates, such as support for WPA2 on Wi-Fi networks, which have been issued since Service Pack 2 was released back in 2004.

Microsoft says that one of the service pack’s main purposes is to ‘fill gaps in the updates users might have missed by declining individual updates when using Automatic Updates, and to deliver updates not made available through Windows Update.’ The company also said that the Windows XP was now ‘nearing its end-of-sales period.’

For more details on Windows XP Service Pack 3, checkout Microsoft’s whitepaper.