So who made the move? I just installed SP1 for Vista and so far I like it. My machine is more responsive than before and uses less ram. It also takes 4 seconds to shut down versus the 45 seconds it needed before.

I'm gonna try out SP3 for XP on my laptop. They just installed SP3 on every computer at the office and so far the only difference I see is the service pack 3 notice in the system properties.

let me know how SP3 is, im sticking with Xp till my next machine so....yeah!

i picked up a cheap second hand dell latitude d620 with a warranty, anyways it was for the office its now my vista test bench, i have to say its not as bad as i expected. Its still very mac OSX ripoff but still not too bad. Lots of getting used to and well it doesnt seem to respect my group policy comming from the active directory though, so no chance it makes it out live on my network here at work, but its still fun

I've upgraded to SP1 for Vista and my computer has finally stopped constantly shutting down from the CPU overheating. I fucking hate this laptop...

a buddy of mine admins a windows domain and has been testing vista sp1, his experience has been terrible. hes had problems with both printing (hitting print causes system restart) to network printers, and issues with antivirus installation and OS-protected files/registry (cant fully install the AV. the IRC conversation pre/during/post upgrade was quite entertaining.

he has since removed sp1, as it caused more problems than it fixed.

interested to see what kind of experiences people have with XPSP3. im sticking with that for my gaming OS until im forced to upgrade to vista.

you talk about system restarts causing problems. I have a user using accpac and listen to this. SHe has 4 reports she regularly prints. 3 of them work fine to her laserjet SI the 4th causes a reboot. WHen she prints to the copier down the hall, no problems, this is on XP!

On my XPx64 machine I'm not loading Framework 2 or 3, and no SP3 for any of my machines. They're all secure, and they're running great; why let MS screw them up?
If your XP machine is up to date, SP3 may do more harm than good.
MS seems to be coding mostly bloatware anymore.
No harm in waiting.

If your Vista machine is doing well I'm not sure I'd jump at the service pack, but from all I've heard, it's prolly badly needed, but it's doubtful it will be the "fix".

I've got SP3 going and all the updates and I'm running great. No bloatware, memory usage is minimal.

Vista SP1 is good. A little more stability for the small number of issues I was having with Vista.

Haven't tried SP3 for XP yet. I would assume that it is quit safe.

Posted by Stewie I've got SP3 going and all the updates and I'm running great. No bloatware, memory usage is minimal.

Anything useful? New features?

Things seem a bit more fast, apparently Microsoft coded in some better support for multi-core processors. Aside from that there isn't much noticeable difference, probably just a lot of security fixes.

The multicore support mods might make it worth loading...

wikipedia has a nice synopsis of the added/removed features. well linked.

http://en.wikipedi..._XP#Service_Pack_3

SP1 for Vista has been yanked from automatic update. Apparently they want to go back and fix a few more compatibility issues before it gets pushed out again.

The MS update site doesn't see that SP2 is loaded on this machine, or doesn't want to play... my XPx64 machine doesn't seem to use SP3 at all.

XP is like a strange pet, you fed it what it likes... weird.
No, this doesn't mean I'll run to Vista!

XP_64 service packs are distributed with win2k3 server IIRC from the bit of reading i have done on the subject.

edit: yea. here we go. stolen from http://en.wikipedi...ns#64-bit_editions

wikipedia wrote: Service Packs Because Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is derived from the Windows Server 2003 codebase, its service packs are also developed and released on the same timeline as the server product, instead of the other editions of Windows XP. For this reason, the RTM installation of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition identifies itself as "Service Pack 1". Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released on March 12, 2007. This service pack is not equivalent to Service Pack 2 for 32-bit versions of Windows XP. Due to the earlier release date of the 32-bit version, the features introduced by Service Pack 2 for 32-bit (x86) editions of Windows XP were already present in the RTM version of its 64-bit (x86-64) counterpart. Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP will not be compatible with Windows XP x64 Edition, and Microsoft has not announced any plans for another service pack for XP Professional x64 Edition.

Posted by neX_ XP_64 service packs are distributed with win2k3 server IIRC from the bit of reading i have done on the subject. edit: yea. here we go. stolen from http://en.wikipedi...ns#64-bit_editions

Cool. Thanks
Yeah, just as well because XPx64 hums away nicely with a minimum of bs jumping around in the background. That silly extra 32 bits seems to give it a big leg up on malware immunity. It seems almost bullet proof... did MS code this?

The other funny thing about XPx64 is there aren't many critical updates or even updates in general to have to load. About half of XP Pro's, nice. It's a whole different animal that plays nicely with almost all XP 32 bit apps.
No driver issues at all... weird.
Something just ain't right with what MS says...

Posted by Brind SP1 for Vista has been yanked from automatic update. Apparently they want to go back and fix a few more compatibility issues before it gets pushed out again.

i bought vista with SP1, will Microsoft be releasing patch for that?

Posted by gmcnewlook i bought vista with SP1, will Microsoft be releasing patch for that?

likely not. but if it shipped with sp1, your OS is likely fairly stable.

i noticed that XPSP3 threw up a dialog in my face on my windows machine last night. im testing SP3 now on my laptop install of windows, since i dont use it often and wont be worried if the OS flips off. im installing the "Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers" version. my experience has been that the 'network installers' are a bit more stable.

ok. couple of thing noted so far about XPSP3.

• DEFINITELY disable your AV scanner before installing
  
• install is ~30mins on a P4 1.6Ghz mobile + sata
  
• if you use styleXP for theme management, it will quit working after you install sp3, so this will break software
  
• its wiped my install of notepad++.exe as the default notepad app for the system, will have to see if i can reverse that.