Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) are both scheduled for release early next year and are currently undergoing in-depth beta testing

Recent reports suggest that Vista SP1 does not do much to increase performance - but that XP SP3 does increase performance by about 10%.

Craig Barth, chief technology officer of Devil Mountain Software Inc is reported as stating on their company blog - “We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS,”

Tests were run using Devil Mountain’s OfficeBench suite of performance benchmarks on a laptop with a 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory, this laptop was also running Microsoft Office 2007. The results reported that XP SP3 delivered a 10% speed increase over SP2, the previous service pack released back in 2004.

Craig Barth said “Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus” … “In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a ‘must-have’ update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond’s not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS.” … According to the Office performance benchmarks, Windows XP SP3 is also considerably faster than Vista SP1. “None of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than two times slower than the most current builds of its older sibling.”

Some testers are calling Windows XP SP3 a “must have” upgrade that will add new features and functionality to IE, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Media Player and fix some bugs. The final version when its released will include three years’ worth of individual updates and hot fixes. For business users, a significant benefit will be the addition of Network Access Protection (NAP) support. NAP is a technology that works in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 to prevent computers that do not meet certain criteria (such as anti-virus protection, correct firewall configuration, etc.) from connecting to a company network

I await the final release with eager anticipation

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