Windows XP SP3

Yes, again.

I’ve got some bad news for those of you still with the sour taste in your mouth from XP Service Pack 2…. Service Pack 3 for Windows XP is coming and you need to get ready. If you don’t want to be caught off-guard by an unannounced release (simultaneously posted for auto-rollout on Windows Update) again, you might want to start doing research and testing now.

Ethan Allen has a ton of information on the pre-SP3/post-SP2 patches released by Microsoft as well as links to a number of beta invitation ids. According to his site, the SP3 release will include Media Center update (Emerald), Windows Media Player 10 or 11 and… Internet Explorer 7.0.

It is absolutely critical for you to get on the front of testing this release because it might break more things than you can imagine. If you manage your clients web applications, or if they depend on web applications a lot, IE7 has been warning web developers to update their code for the new UserAgent string. If you don’t know what that means its time to start reading.