Service Pack 3

[unosys]

If you're interested in the future of Windows, be sure to read this detailed report.

[sonu27]

There is a huge difference between Win2K and WinXP.

But I do believe that there will be a service pack 3 for XP.

[os2fan2]

One might as easily consider WinXP to be an eXPensive downgrade of Win2k.

Alternately it is a point upgrade plagued with lots of stuff where M$ is pushing vendors off the market.

[Martijn]

i think the poster meant it as a joke

but the answer is NO!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

well, actually there's a xpsp3res.dll in my system32 folder.

FileVersion:5.1.2600.2626

Description: Service Pack 3-messages

i saw it wenn i was sniffing through my system32 folder this morning.

apparently it was installed by one of the April Patches from MS.

[sonu27]

Intresting find!

Werid though.

[JPry565]

I was led to believe that people are not highly anticipating longhorn as they are comfortable with Windows XP professional. Why?

[tarquel]

lol one word....

fear

Well...maybe not fear lol but because its different to what people were used to.

I heard so many people slate XP when it first came out - however, I never had any problem with it. I thought it was great compared 98SE (ME don't even come into it lol).

I dont think I need to go on anymore however, you all should get what I'm going on about lol

Regards,

N.

[DarkShadows]

I was led to believe that people are not highly anticipating longhorn as they are comfortable with Windows XP professional. Why?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One of the easiest answers to your question is money versus the perceived return on investment (ROI) for spending it.

Organizations spend a lot of time, money, and labor on: purchasing new OS licenses for all their workstations, testing all of their in-house applications to ensure compatibility and business continuity, and the project to implement the new OS. They may even have to (or chose to) upgrade some of their applications. (Although the recent versions of Windows have done a lot for application compatibility.) And on top of these expenditures, even if all goes well (which it never does), there is the cost of the disruption of your business productivity while the new technology is absorbed by the people in the organization. It takes time to learn to get the value out of new technology. Plus, I believe that M$ is pushing "Modern computers" for their new OS, which may mean increased hardware costs for organizations.

So now you have to ask, is it worth all that expenditure just to move up one version? Will we get a positive return on our investment? Do you think most people in an organization will get any value out of the new gadgets and gizmos?

One could argue that any value they get is completely offset by the cost of the upgrade or the productivity lost while learning the new technology, especially if the new version of the technology doesn't take a quantum leap forward.

I know many companies that intentionally skip Windows and Office Versions for these reasons. Look at the time line of the release of Windows 2000 and Windows XP--they are fairly close together. Now look at the functionality difference between them. Would you say they are more than 30% different? Even if you think this variation is more, is it enough to justify the price you would have to pay to move up one version? To be fair to Microsoft, 2000 was the next version of NT , whereas XP is designed to replace both NT and the 95/98/Me OS line. (Going forward it's now all one Windows.) Still, not many organizations are going to pay to roll out successive versions, if they have to pay for the next version. The same with the Office 2000, XP, 2003 suites. The cost of a license is in the hundreds of dollars per seat for Windows and Office. The upgrade prices aren't much less expensive than the full versions. So it gets pretty expensive to always purchase the next big thing.

One has to ask the question: Am I getting any return on my investment when I purchase the next big thing? If you are always an early adopter, you pay for it. There is less documentation available, less books written, less information on web sites like these in the first year of an OS. Less in-house resources trained up on the new version. You'll also have to install more service packs and more hot-fixes across your ownership period of your license. And as experience shows, each M$ hot-fix and service pack can create its own problems. On the contrary, if you wait a year on an Office or Windows version, you'll most likely will come aboard with the release of the first service pack, not to mention better books and resources. This makes implementation up to a more stable version of the newest less expensive and less labor-intensive.

Personally, I alternate upgrading both my Office and Windows OS purchases. I currently have Windows XP, but only Office 2000. I don't plan to purchase the Office suite again until they release the version designed for Longhorn. This enables me to skip from 2000 straight to whatever the next Office version is. I miss out on spending $200.00-$400.00 US on Office 2003, on top of having already skipped the same cost for Office XP. Both of which would only have to be replaced a year or two from now anyway. And since I do not require Sharepoint, there isn't much in the way of improvement (in my opinion) between Office 2000 and Office 2003, at least not $400.00 worth of improvement. Now when I eventually have to convert all those Access Databases I've developed, I don't need to convert from 2000 to XP to 2003 to <insert new version here>. My total cost of ownership is much lower than the early adopters who jump on each new version as it is released.

Then there is also the price factor. Demand is always highest in the first year of a new software package (or hardware component).

Now most of the arguments above were primarily about an organization's consideration. But most home users also tend to stick with what they have at home. The average mom and pop want a PC that dad can work on the family finances, junior can do his homework on, send email to grandma, and maybe mom will use the PC to work on the family photo album, home movie, or plan the next family vacation, and everyone gets to use the Internet. Windows XP already provides all of this in spades. So most people will wait several years to upgrade their PCs. They tend to get their OS with their new PC, and they don't purchase PCs all the time.

It is only the technophiles, like us, and the gaming community that tend to consistently be early adopters. And history has even shown some of these people that patience is often a necessity, if not a virtue. I know a few gamers who keep their old OS around just to play a favorite game that just doesn't seem to work on the new OS.

[suryad]

I think XP SP3 is a surefire release and there is no doubt as to whether it is vaporware or what not. SP3 IS gonna happen and that along with a whole bunch of Longhorn tehcnologies that are going to be working with XP will only seal my investment in XP for the next 3 years I would think. I am quite happy with using an nLited version of XP that just plain rocks for me. Longhorn will turn out to be great but I would wait till it matures just like XP matured. Sure there are shortcomings in XP but MS is trying to get rid of those. I think this is great time to be a Windows user.