XP service pack 4?
XP service pack 4?
Here is some thought to pass on... XP will live on for at least 2-3 more years and is supported till 2012 I think. Now will MS push out a SP4 cause the amount of updates after SP3 have really started to count up. Next week they will push out another 7 updates on top of what we already have including a Critical Update for Win7 before it even ships.
comments? thoughts?
comments? thoughts?
- morbidpete
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i usually download, but sometimes make my own every once in a while
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1838607,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1838607,00.asp
True but this isn't exactly what I'm talking about... more so a fully supported and packed Service Pack 4 with all the updates after Sp3.morbidpete wrote:i usually download, but sometimes make my own every once in a while
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1838607,00.asp
well, given that i have a generic distrust of mammoth corporations in general, and a modicum of the same for MS in particular, it wouldnt surprise me if they hem'd and haw'd with hotfixes and patches till support ended.
that being said, i believe MS will come through. they may take their time, but imo sp4 will be XPs swan song. MSs efforts to make win7 accessible pricing-wise i think will help moving the market past XP and on to the windows 7 era.
that being said, i believe MS will come through. they may take their time, but imo sp4 will be XPs swan song. MSs efforts to make win7 accessible pricing-wise i think will help moving the market past XP and on to the windows 7 era.
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- YeOldeStonecat
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It's no biggie. NT 4 had 8 service packs.Sava700 wrote:
comments? thoughts?
OK, technically it had 6.
Service packs 1 through 6...but the original service pack 6 had major bugs, so they pulled it and quickly released 6.0a. (so that's the 7th service pack)
And then another year or so later, they released a big update which wasn't technically called a service pack..it was called "NT 4 Security Rollup Package" (which was unofficially named service pack 7).
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- YeOldeStonecat
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You'd be surprised at how low of hardware it can run well on. At our office even, one of our general purpose rigs on the service bench that Daves World uses, it's an early P4 Dell Optiplex mini desktop, Pentium 4 HyperThread (not even dual core yet), 1 gig of RAM, onboard Intel video. Windows 7 is running faster than XP did on that rig, and he kept it in good shape...it was a good running XP rig.jeremyboycool wrote: I don't think my computer could handle anything pass XP, at any rate.
I remember during the beta and RC months, in some tech forums people seeing what they could install Win7 on, quite a few people even breaking out old Pentium III/M laptops and Win7 ran great on them.
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I agree- so far I'm really impressed with it. By far, the fastest, easiest, most trouble-free install of any Windows OS I've ever had. All hardware recognized, even my old HP Lasjet 3200 MFP. Most all of the Vista quirks are gone, although I admit, I'm a dinosaur and miss Windows classic for a theme. Not a big thing though. Had a couple RDP hiccups to remote servers, but turning off checksum took care of that.YeOldeStonecat wrote:You'd be surprised at how low of hardware it can run well on.
It really is pretty snappy, and doesn't seem to have the hangups and pauses I would see with Vista from time to time. Only software I had problems with (so far) was Acrobat 8.0 standard- wouldn't show up as a printer. But after running the update and rebooting it, that works fine now too. In Vista, sometimes it would have permission issues when creating pdf's on network drives, but only sporadically. So far though, none with 7.
Could it be they finally got one right????

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Does this spell the end of the Apple/PC commericals?twwabw wrote:I agree- so far I'm really impressed with it. By far, the fastest, easiest, most trouble-free install of any Windows OS I've ever had. All hardware recognized, even my old HP Lasjet 3200 MFP. Most all of the Vista quirks are gone, although I admit, I'm a dinosaur and miss Windows classic for a theme. Not a big thing though. Had a couple RDP hiccups to remote servers, but turning off checksum took care of that.
It really is pretty snappy, and doesn't seem to have the hangups and pauses I would see with Vista from time to time. Only software I had problems with (so far) was Acrobat 8.0 standard- wouldn't show up as a printer. But after running the update and rebooting it, that works fine now too. In Vista, sometimes it would have permission issues when creating pdf's on network drives, but only sporadically. So far though, none with 7.
Could it be they finally got one right????![]()


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I'm with you with the classic theme...purely from a standpoint of support, twas easy to walk clients over the phone to certain things, right click My Computer, or right click Network Places, or start ==> Run (notice you have to add the RUN feature now)twwabw wrote: I'm a dinosaur and miss Windows classic for a theme. Only software I had problems with (so far) was Acrobat 8.0 standard- wouldn't show up as a printer. But after running the update and rebooting it, that works fine now too.
Could it be they finally got one right????![]()
PDF issues....did you do Win 7 64? Vista 64 had quite a few PDF related things too, including exporting from accounting software.
Yeah they got it right, although IMO XP was pretty darned good too.
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Nah- too many hassles w/64bit. No bang for the buck for me. Just went through this whole 32 vs 64 at an Architectural client, running CAad and Revit on 32 vs 64. The differences in performance were minimal, but the hassles were great. Video drivers, the Cad apps themselves, you name it. And then of course, 64 bit printer drivers- ugh.YeOldeStonecat wrote:PDF issues....did you do Win 7 64? Vista 64 had quite a few PDF related things too, including exporting from accounting software.
My Vista / pdf errors were on my accounting software too. Same version (8.x), and my Vista install was also only 32bit. For whatever reason though, it is no longer an issue with 7. Woohoo!
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- YeOldeStonecat
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Yeah had some myself on my own workstation at the office, did Vista 64, and QB Pro 2007 had issues with the PDF function. Eh we're upgrading to QB 2010 shortly anyways, got some discount when adding the credit card module so we can accept them.twwabw wrote: My Vista / pdf errors were on my accounting software too. Same version (8.x), and my Vista install was also only 32bit. For whatever reason though, it is no longer an issue with 7. Woohoo!
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A Pentium 4 and a gig of ram is still better then my pc (Amd Sempron 2200 and 512 MB ram). I guess if I added more ram it would meet the min. requirements but then that is cost of a new OS and cost of ram.YeOldeStonecat wrote:You'd be surprised at how low of hardware it can run well on. At our office even, one of our general purpose rigs on the service bench that Daves World uses, it's an early P4 Dell Optiplex mini desktop, Pentium 4 HyperThread (not even dual core yet), 1 gig of RAM, onboard Intel video. Windows 7 is running faster than XP did on that rig, and he kept it in good shape...it was a good running XP rig.
I remember during the beta and RC months, in some tech forums people seeing what they could install Win7 on, quite a few people even breaking out old Pentium III/M laptops and Win7 ran great on them.
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And probably a better value to get a cheap dell so itd be more ram, new hardware and the OS, till you need that though, I'd say stick with XP in your situation.jeremyboycool wrote:A Pentium 4 and a gig of ram is still better then my pc (Amd Sempron 2200 and 512 MB ram). I guess if I added more ram it would meet the min. requirements but then that is cost of a new OS and cost of ram.
- mnosteele52
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I don't think they will release anymore service packs for XP. Microsoft want's everyone to update to Windows 7 and they are pushing it hard, it is much more advanced and better than XP. Also, X64 is pretty much the standard now and 99% of XP installations are X32 and limit you to about 3.5GB of RAM. People are doing more and need more RAM than that. I don't see MS doing anything that would help keep XP around any longer than it has to be.


I hope they do release a sp4. I can see it happening just before support ends. Windows 7 doesn't like my two old beaters so I'll be running XP on them for a while. Both won't boot from a DVD so I can't easily do a clean install of 7. They both give a code 5 cannot boot from cdrom error. The BIOS just can't handle booting from a DVD.
Even then my sound doesn't work and I can't get dual displays to work on my ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series AGP card. The drivers install but I get some kind of error after that and get stuck with just the basic functionality. I've got a Athlon II x4 620 system just about ready to go so I'm going to try the windows 7 x64 90 day enterprise trial on that and see how it goes. Anyway I'd like to see an XP sp4, most of the PC's i work on for friends and family are still running XP so it would save me some time on windows update. 


I don't know the same things you don't know. 

I would say its time for a SP4...Yesterdays record release of patches should say something although some are not for Xp, its still alot.
FYI: I checked on my XP machine and had 18 updates High Priority!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/ ... Content.11Microsoft Corp. issued a record number of security patches for its software Tuesday as part of its regular monthly update.
The software maker plugged 34 holes and designated most of them "critical," Microsoft's most severe rating. Among them are fixes for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and even Windows 7, which doesn't go on sale to consumers until Oct. 22 but has been in use by early testers and software developers.
The patches target a wide array of Microsoft software, including the Internet Explorer Web browser, Media Player, Outlook and the Silverlight technology underlying multimedia Web sites.
Security researchers at McAfee Inc., which makes antivirus software, noted that many of the holes addressed Tuesday are dangerous because they expose regular PC users to harmful programming code when they visit rigged Web sites or play media files that have been tampered with.
Consumers can get the updates by turning on the "Automatic Updates" feature in Windows or by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/security.
Previously, the most security flaws Microsoft had addressed in a single update was 31, which happened in June.
FYI: I checked on my XP machine and had 18 updates High Priority!
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