Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Today we are happy to announce that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) has released to manufacturing (RTM). Windows XP SP3 bits are now working their way through our manufacturing channels to be available to OEM and Enterprise customers. We are also in the final stages of preparing for release to the web (i.e. you!) on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Online documentation for Windows XP SP3, such as Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and the Microsoft TechNet Windows XP TechCenter, will be updated then. For customers who use Windows XP at home, Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer."



Still rocking Windows XP? Then you'll have a new service pack coming your way within a few days - Microsoft has finished the bits and they'll be available on Windows Update on the 29th...though I'm a bit confused by the mention of "early summer" for XP Home. So is this April 29th release only for XP Professional then?

"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 - you can now do so! We've seen quite a bit of questions in our comments so we want to communicate as much as possible surrounding Windows Vista SP1 and today's release to Windows Update as we can. For those of you happy to wait - sit tight because SP1 will start downloading to PCs automatically beginning in mid-April (Remember, this happens only if you have your Windows Update configured to automatically download updates and SP1 will automatically download but not automatically install). But if you want to get the benefit of a year's worth of improvements right now, go check Windows Update today...(Hit the Start Menu, All Programs, and select Windows Update). If in running Windows Update you do not see Windows Vista SP1 listed, there are a number of good reasons for this (Eight in fact, see the whole list)."



It's here - it's finally here! For many people, the release of a service pack is when they start seriously considering a Microsoft operating system. Myself, I've been running Vista on every system I own (save one small laptop) since January 2007, and for the most part Vista works great. I copy files back and forth a lot and Vista's copying performance was truly suck-tastic, but it's now much improved with SP1. Ars Technica has a great article on all the things that have been changed, so give that a read if you're curious. I've been slowly putting SP1 on all my computers over the past couple of weeks (I got SP1 from MSDN), and with one exception, it's gone on smoothly. The one exception? My Dell XPS M1330. The error message it gave me was quite unhelpful, so I'm going to try again in a couple of weeks and see if Windows Update has any goodness for me. Any other XPS M1330 users out there having trouble getting SP1 installed?