Topic: Windows XP SP3 is reported to have increase by at least 10%

[MysterD]

This won't bode well for Vista, which probably needs more of a speed boast than XP.

Win XP Service Pack 3 testers are claiming there's at least an increase of 10% in speed performance w/ the new SP3 installed.

[Quemaqua]

I wonder in what other ways they'll break it, then.

[PyroMenace]

My friend's girlfriend got a new laptop with Vista on it. You could not tell that the thing was brand new because it runs so slow, it feels like its 6 years old. The latency to launch programs is atrocious.

[Ghandi]

Good news for me, considering that I'm not going to switch anytime soon.

[gpw11]

You can get the beta of SP3 if you look hard enough, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd want a beta of.

But how is this really even possible, and faster in what capacity?

[Quemaqua]

And is it just propaganda to get us on board with whatever horrible, nightmarish lock-ins and tie-downs they're trying to force on us now so that we'll want to upgrade to Vista?  I know nothing about it, but I don't trust it.  At all.

[Pugnate]

Windows XP SP3 is reported to have increase by at least 10%

From the thread heading, I had no idea what it increased. I hope SP3 doesn't require me to patch every game. That would be annoying.

edit:

runs Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.

Wtf? Who the hell cares? This doesn't mean the performance is going to carry on to other software. 

Devil Mountain Software, which earlier in the week claimed Windows Vista SP1 was no faster than the original, repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3, the service pack recently issued to about 15,000 testers.

Not counting games, I have found Vista to be significantly faster than XP. Haven't installed SP1 yet.

Anyway I skimmed through the entire article.

How the hell can they base anything on one freakin' benchmark. Idiots.

There could be a 1000 different reasons why the office thing runs better. It is ridiculous.

I am not saying it isn't true, but to have an orgasm on one benchmark is stupid.

[scottws]

Vista SP1 is out?

[Jedi]

Vista SP1 is out?

Not yet, but it's not far off.

[scottws]

Oh, Pug said he hadn't installed SP1 yet which made me think it was out.

I don't know why people are so scared of these service packs.  They are bug fixes and security updates.  I've never had any trouble with any of them.  BTW, XP SP3 is more like XP SP1 in that there are no feature upgrades or additions like in SP2 that broke a bunch of stuff.  It's basically just a rollup of fixes since RTM (and the stuff added in SP2).

[Cobra951]

The buzz was that XP SP2 broke some things that people relied on.  Eventually, those were taken care of, I guess.  SP1 was painless for everyone with a legitimate XP install.  I have no authority for this, except for the example of the firewire speed problem.  As I recall, there were some apps that needed patching to work properly with SP2, though nothing specific comes to mind.

[scottws]

Right, which is why Microsoft is reportedly avoiding doing a service pack like SP2 ever again.  Instead, they'll basically be rollups of hotfixes previously released.

[WindAndConfusion]

Even regular hotfixes have been known to break things. Witness the recent example of Microsoft patching their WGA authentication servers, causing an outage that temporarily broke at least some 12,000 Windows boxes.

And didn't SP2 introduce the Windows firewall? I think that's what broke most of the applications.

[WindAndConfusion]

Faster in what capacity?

It runs Office 10% faster.

This is important, because Office is so huge and bloated that it actually needs a 10% speedup.

[scottws]

No, it didn't introduce Windows firewall, it turned it on by default and I think changed how it worked a little bit.

But that's what I'm saying.  Microsoft does not intend to incorporate any new features or major upgrades with any service pack in the future.  If this holds true, there will never be anything like SP2 released by Microsoft again.

[beo]

we can only hope. when sp2 came out i was working support for a software company. sp2 fucked up the client software for our biggest product. it was weeks before we got a fix sent down and telling customers that they're going to have to roll back all their desktops doesn't make you very popular.

[gpw11]

If I remember correctly, SP2 fleshed out the firewall a lot.  Previously, it basically just hid your IP address.  SP2 transformed it into the half-assed firewall that we have today.

[Jedi]

SP2 didn't add so much as fleshed out what was there, of note to the common user it added the security centre which pulled the firewall and a few other things together. I can't say I'm looking forward to this, we'll need to look at testing this and rolling it out to the clients... such a f'ing pain....

[Pugnate]

Scottws, I had assumed the Vista service pack was out, with so many people talking about performance etc. Also I didn't have a single problem with SP2 on XP myself, but I found a lot of people had numerous issues.