The last service pack for Microsoft Windows XP was released almost four years ago. In the meantime, engineers in Redmond were busy on a little project called Vista. Now that Vista has been out the door for a year, Microsoft has finished up Service Pack 3 for Windows XP and released it to manufacture. The new release will be available for public download next Tuesday, April 29.

“Windows XP SP3 bits are now working their way through our manufacturing channels to be available to OEM and enterprise customers,” Chris Keroack, release manager for Windows serviceability, posted to Microsoft's TechNet forum. “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.”

SP3 will be distributed to home users via Automatic Update in early June, the company said. Online documentation for Windows XP SP3 will be updated next week.

The new service pack is a 70MB download to update Window XP and can be installed on top of either SP1 or SP2. It doesn't work with the 64-bit version of XP, however.

Previous Patches

Much of SP3 consists of previously released patches, according to Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Network Security. “In terms of functionality, SP3 delivers eight mainline items, which had already been previously available by download,” Storms noted in an e-mail.

While consumers won't notice much difference, “enterprises will welcome the added functionality of Digital Identity Management Service (DIMS) and support for WPA2,” Storms said. WPA2 is a wireless security solution derived from the 802.11e standard. DIMS allows users to access all their certificates and private keys for applications and services.

As for the new items in XP, enterprises will be mostly concerned with Network Access Protection, a platform that enforces compliance with network policies, and “possibly FIPS 140-1 compliance” — a federal standard for cryptography.

“If there were ever a sign that Microsoft really will discontinue support and development for XP, then this is it,” Storms said. “Every enterprise that dreads the move to Vista (and there are a lot of them), needs to wake up and bite the Vista bullet soon.”

Waiting for Windows 7?

Indeed, SP3 is the “official final step in the evolution of XP,” said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT. “Microsoft has done a very good job of putting a cherry on the top of XP and in a sense bringing it fully up to date so that it is capable of additional years of service.”

But it's not clear that enterprise users will make the shift to Windows Vista, King said, especially in light of last week's statements by Steve Ballmer that Vista is a “work in progress” and Bill Gates' prediction last month that Windows 7, the next version of Windows, will be completed within a year.

The completion of XP, together with the executives' comments, could “potentially impact uptake of Vista,” King said. “If customers are wedded to XP and have heavy concerns about Vista, they may calculate, can I wait for Windows 7?”

Comparisons with Microsoft's previous Windows disaster, Windows ME, may be overblown, King said. ME was a dumbed-down version of the OS intended to offer a Mac-like experience to consumers and was quickly rejected by the market. With Vista, Microsoft may have erred by “biting off more than they could chew,” King said.

While most consumers will simply take whatever operating system comes with their new PCs, businesses — especially large enterprises — will think long and hard before adopting an OS that is not stable and predictable. “If Windows 7 is “not too far down the pike,” and Microsoft has not addressed key concerns about Vista, the enterprise may well take a pass on Vista for the next 12 to 18 months, King said.