I put service pack 2 in this morning 10th August & have no complaints. The firewall seems fine & the popup blocker is good too. All my programmes including P2P programmes are runing great.No complaints what so ever, would definetley recomend to try.

I am generally critical of Microsoft but this time is different.
I have seen many adverse comments about SP2 and its release date etc.
Frankly, I would much rather Microsoft got this release right before making it generally available, unlike the situation when XP was first released. Think back to all the updates and changes made on that from day 1 and I don't think their would be so much criticism now.

I have downloaded and installed 2179 and Aida32 shows it as 6.00.2900.2179 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040802-1419). So is it THE final or do the last few builds carry the RTM tag? Runs great though.............

NO... it is NOT the real RTM according to Microsoft's Mike Brannigan (who is actually on the SP2 team) who wrote on the SP2 Preview Message Boards:

We are still working on it. As has been said a significant number of times
before - it will be release when we are ready and all the required testing
teams etc have signed off on it. Once final we will then start the release
cycle which will eventually see the public release on Windows Update and
also the complete network release from the web site.
Until then continue to use Windows Update to ensure you are up to date with
the latest fixes and patches and you may also like to enable automatic
download in you Automatic Update Client to ensure you get it as soon as we
make it available for Windows Update download.

Please note the date of the final sign off and RTM is not necessarily the
same day it will be released to Premier Support Contract customers, OEMs,
other third parties, end users via Microsoft Download site or Windows
Update. It is also not the date that all language version will be complete
or available.

--

Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Brannigan [Microsoft]

Neowin is probably the least reliable, and least credible "news" site I've ever seen. I don't know why people insist on believing them considering that every article they've posted regarding SP2 has been completely false, inaccurate, or blatantly wrong.

People just need to realize that when you see it posted on *.microsoft.com.... THEN AND ONLY THEN is SP2 released.

uh, you won't see it on Microsoft.com, because premier members (OEMS too of course) will see it gold and available first, (to test) and automatic updates/sus updates will then see it staggered, and WU will be likely weeks from that moment as well. Microsoft will be advertising on TV and online to get the word out about this as well.

Yes, you will see it on Microsoft.com... it doesn't matter WHO sees it first, the point is that their site is WHERE it will be, and the official news of its release will be on their site. Just because Neowin promises a schedule does not mean it's true.

Do you really think that the same team of developers working on WindowsXP SP2 is the same team of developers working on Longhorn? Of course not. The same amount of resources are still dedicated to Longhorn as there were 6 months ago. Same goes for XP SP2.

Once SP2 is done they'll probably start working on fixing all the bugs that people are realistically going to find, and possibly start working towards SP3.

This isn't a mom-and-pop organization. They probably have hundreds of teams of developers for all of their various products. Implying that Longhorn development is being delayed due to XP SP2 development is rediculous.

In my opinion there are some teams which belong to longhorn project which is shifted to help win xp sp2. but it is not all.
So it will affecting the longhorn schedule, but not same number used to help win xp sp2.

Actually most of the bug fixes and features of SP-2 will be in the Longhorn operating system. It makes sense to start with a more stable windows and internet explorer with bug fixes and security patches when building Longhorn. So I could understand why they would want SP-2 finished first. Atleast, that's how I make sense of it.

Microsoft need to tweak the default setting of Win XP SP2, so we did not need this
http://ask.slashdot.org/...0&tid=4&tid=218

http://mywebpages.comcas...pportCD/OptimizeXP.html

So most people can get better and faster win XP by default.

Bug fixes won't be present in Longhorn, as it is an entirely different and unreleased operating system.

Rubbish. Longhorn is based on the Windows XP codebase. It's not a entirely new operating system (as in group up rewrite), it improvements to the existing code.

Any fixes (where applicable) will be brought into the Longhorn codebase.

Being based on code-base doesn't mean it's not an entirely new beast. Hell, the entire NT-kernel as well as MacOSX are "based on Unix" but you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate the practicality of that base to an end user.

Longhorn, ultimately, is an entirely new OS with a new interface, new technologies, etc etc.

I tried out Hare. It's a placebo effect. The program does nothing in my testing. I tried compressing four FLAC files into mp3's (using --alt-preset standard, Lame 3.90.3) and compressing without hare took 2:22, with hare took 2:22. PCMark2004 test showed the same score (margin of error of 2 pts, and the two points were higher without hare). This program tries to sound fancy to make you believe it's actually doing something. The memory app may be the only part of this program that actually does anything.

No kidding. Explorer has been around since 1995 and it is still the buggiest piece of software MS has ever written. It usually starts crapping out on me within an hour of installing the OS. I don't believe that they've rewritten all or even most of it since then. It's just all bubblegum and spit over a massive conglomeration of legacy code.