SP2 Delayed Again
...from one of my Newsgroups by e-mail so can't post a link; slightly edited to shorten it:
Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, which Microsoft had previously said would be out in June, is going to be delayed. Press reports state that Microsoft has delayed the service pack till July, but I know that internally there's already talk that it will most likely be August before SP2 will be released, and possibly later!
Now, some people are all getting exited [sic!] about this, and I agree, it has taken WAY to long for Microsoft to come out with this service pack.
The first delays occurred because Microsoft decided that SP2 should have a whole set of new security features. This is of course a good thing. The latest delays are caused because SP2 is breaking some software functionality with Microsoft products (would they have delayed it if the problems would have been with other developer's products?). Apparently ASP.NET & Visual Studio 2003 are among some of the products having problems, but there are also reports of Outlook 2003 & Outlook Express "hang-ups" when opening messages.
Lets just hope that Microsoft does a thorough job in beta testing this Service Pack, and will only release it if they are confident that it is "good to go", and not because of some arbitrary date that was set by someone.
SP2 for Windows XP will most likely be causing problems for some users. There's no way around it. You cannot test for all the variations in software & hardware installed on users systems, but Microsoft should take its time to minimize it as much as possible.
End of quote.