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Windows XP SP3 Postponed Until 2008

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wait-or-upgrade dept.

Rockgod quotes an article saying "With Microsoft now saying that its next major service pack for Windows XP will not ship until 2008, some Windows users are wondering whether the software upgrade will ever be released." and then later "Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, agrees that Microsoft may very well decide to drop XP Service Pack 3. "It absolutely could happen. Microsoft is under no obligation to produce any service packs, ever," he explains. "They feel that because these fixes are available through the auto-update that there's less need to create a service pack."

2 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sounds sensible by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The whole SP thing is a throwback to the bad old days of 28.8k modems and CDs by post. Now we can add the fixes as they come along so why bother with a monolithic chunk of code that must be a testing nightmare for MS as well as corporate end users?

    Because you can read the SP from a CD and have the fixes installed before you connect the computer to the internet at all.
    In the past, there have been some security holes that could be exploited as soon as your PC is on the net, making it a race between the malware and the patches which gets to your PC first. Loading the SP from a CD removes this problem.
    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  2. Re:Available from autoupdate? by theRiallatar · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wasn't going to reply, but I kept seeing more and more of the same posts as I was reading through. Try a test. Connect a simple out-of-the-box router to a DSL/Cable connection with default settings. Connect an unpatched Windows XP SP0 machine to the router and make sure it has web access. Don't use that computer. See how long it takes to get rooted/malware. Answer? It NEVER will. Because the router blocks all unsolicited incoming traffic, unless you've monkeyed with the config to change this. The only way a computer can get rooted/malwared through a default-settings router is by stupid user tricks, or by another already infected machine on the NATed network.... which would have got infected by stupid user tricks.