Service Pack 3 Speeds XP

Microsoft has released the beta version of Windows XP to a limited number of testers just days after Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was released. Testers say SP3 speeds up Windows XP.



Service Pack 3 Boosts XP's Speed
Looks like the six-year old operating system is improving, as early testers of Windows XP SP3 reveals that it speeds up Windows XP. Microsoft has released the beta version of SP3 to a limited number of tester just days after the release of SP1 for Vista.

Devil Mountain Software tested the SP1 for Vista earlier, and claimed that Vista with SP1 is no faster than the original, unpatched version. They repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3.

"We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog Friday.

Devil Mountain ran its OfficeBench suite of performance benchmarks on a laptop equipped with Office 2007, Microsoft's latest application suite. The notebook - the same unit used in the Vista/Vista SP1 tests earlier - featured a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory. The results reported a 10% speed increase under XP SP3 when compared to SP2, the service pack released in 2004.

"Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus," Barth said. "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," said Barth.

This may be the Service Pack that could snatch away Vista's selling points. Since companies are still reluctant to upgrade to Vista, they may test out this service pack and eventually skip Windows Vista altogether if all goes well. For one thing, upgrading to Windows Vista costs money - to purchase the operating system, to upgrade the computer components to match the requirements of Vista, and to train people on how to use the new operating system. Upgrading Windows XP to Service Pack 3, is free, however. In addition, XPs performance is better than Vista, considering the application incompatibilities, and with this upgrade, it looks like XPs the clear winner.

But we can't tell for sure. Even though Microsoft extended the support for the six-year old operating system, they may come up with some scheme to force Windows XP users to upgrade to Vista.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is scheduled to be released in the early quarter of 2008, but Microsoft said this lock is not definite, but will respond accordingly to consumer demands.

War in Microsoft

Analysts say that Microsoft Windows Vista's biggest problem is not competition from other companies like Apple. It's more like Family Feud, actually.


Vista's Biggest Problem
Microsoft's biggest worry shouldn't be rival operating systems from Apple Inc. or Red Hat, but competition from it's own Windows XP, analysts said last week.

The big story isn't that 32% of the companies we surveyed said that they would start Vista deployments by the end of next year," said Benjamin Gray, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "It's that companies have been hugely successful in standardizing on Windows XP."

About 85% of US and European companies with more than 1,000 employees use Windows XP, up from 65% a year before. Although Windows XP is already six years old, Gray warned not to bet against it. "There are plenty of companies looking forward to XP SP3," he said. That next hot-fix and patch rollup is to ship sometime in the first quarter of 2008, Microsoft has said, and it will reportedly be XP's last service pack.

Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP," Gray said. A lot of companies use Windows XP that Microsoft may feel obligated to extend the product mainstream support past its April 2009 expiration date. "I wouldn't be surprised," Gray said, "although it might require some additional pressure on the company by its largest customers."

Still, XP will eventually get the boot in favor of Vista. Vista isn't a matter of if, but of when and how," he noted.

Businesses will start upgrading their operating system to Vista by the end of 2008, while some will do this in 2009, and 2010. Still, some companies are skittish about upgrading, according to Forrester's data.

He attributed the lowered expectations to a lack of detailed information about Vista in 2006; too-high prices for PCs with 2GB of memory, which is essentially the minimum needed for Vista, according to company managers; and a larger-than-expected number of incompatible applications.

"Application incompatibility is a big, big headache," Gray said, citing reports from companies preparing for a migration to Vista. Those firms said applications incompatible with Vista made up between 10% and 40% of their software portfolios. "That's causing a lot of XP shops to take a wait-and-see approach to Vista."

But Gray said he was convinced Microsoft will win out in the end, if only because it has virtually no competitor worth the name in the enterprise market. "Linux and Mac have 1% or 2%, and in some cases, such as Europe and the largest corporations, they don't even register," he said. "Microsoft owns this space, and I don't see that changing."

Vista Sales Hit the Mark

Despite the number of complaints and whines of consumers using Vista, the operating system's sales is growing

Microsoft Ships 88 Million Copies Windows Vista

Windows Vista came out not without its problems. Vista users complained the operating system was hard to use, and that many of their past software, and even hardware, are incompatible. Add to that the fact that the operating system required a meaty computer to run smoothly.

It may seem that consumers and enterprises doesn't like the new OS. However, this week, Microsoft announced that it has shipped 88 million copies of Windows Vista - that's double the number of Windows XP copies shipped at the same period. Vista hit its 60 million mark this late July.

Three-quarters of the sales were 'premium' versions of Windows Vista, compared to Windows XP's 59 percent sales.

The 88 million amount mostly includes computers with Vista preinstalled in them purchased by consumers and businesses. That number also includes those copies of Vista purchase online and in stores.

Business, who renewed their volume license with Windows that allowed them to upgrade to Vista, was up 27 percent.