SP2, is it worth it?

I've always used Windows XP Pro with SP1 only, I've stayed away from SP2 because of a previous bad experience (it monopolized my PC and added tons of bloat).

I'm getting my W3J in a few days and would like to do a fresh install (repartition, NTFS, my own windows). I have 2 Windows XP cds, one with no service pack (that I will upgrade to SP1) and one with SP2, which one should I install? I am paranoid that SP2 is full of useless bloat, but I may be wrong.. what do you think?

 

microsoft is requiring sp2 to get (at least some) critical updates and such. so that is a reason to have it. I feel that it does help xp a fair bit. never had any problems with it. but i do disable some things, like the security center

 

Thanks, I think I'll give it a shot since it's a new laptop. If I don't like it I can always revert back to SP1.

The security center is what I found annoying, I'll try disabling it too.

 

I've been running SP2 since the first day it came out and no problem at all on any of the computers that I own.

You should be now thinking about switching to Vista, and not about installing SP2.

Cheers.

 

hell yes! in fact its soooo old now that theres enough security updates that has been released that an sp3 is long overdue.

 

sp2 is a necessary evil. older laptops did not like it, and i believe there was a high failure rate on intalling them on old laptops (40% or more).

it is fine now, and some of the security features CAN be turned off if you have third party apps

 

I'm getting the latest XP release with SP2 (August 2006) so the updates should probably all be there. Don't know about switching to Vista yet, are there any driver / game compatibility issues for the W3J ?

 

The Security center warnings can be tricky to disable, but if you open it, there should be a link at the left of the window to "Change the way Security Center alerts me" or something like that.

 

The original SP2 release created performance issues for a lot of people...but MS has patch/tweaked it so that's not an issue anymore.

 

I'm pretty sure there's also a bunch of WiFi stuff in SP2 that's pretty much a requirement these days (ie, support for 128-bit WAP encryption).

 

Just an FYI support for SP1 will end October of 2006.

 

*WPA security. But yes, SP2 has updated a lot of things that make you more secure overall. If your computer can run it without issues, you should definitely use it, and it's been pretty well vetted by now on almost all machine configurations. I believe they also updated the Firewall's capabilities so it actually turns on before network connections are live (SP1 and before, you could get hacked by someone setting up a connection as you booted), and the basic security mechanisms of XP with SP2.

 

Go for SP2. It's smoother and has many more features. Personally, I use the Windows firewall. That may or may not be a good thing depending on what you do. In no way is it the best firewall, but every other firewall I've ever used has interfered with processes such as wireless networking. On every computer I've ever used. Plus, they're annoying. And I haven't had any problems on my M90, so I don't worry about it.

 

I will echo everyone else and say get SP2. It is what made XP a good OS. It was a big boost to security. Most the problems people had were with existing installs. When you put SP2 over an older install it can break a lot of things causing much badness. On a new machine it won't have a problem.

 

a fresh install of windows xp with integrated sp2 is the best way to go.

windows xp -> then install sp1 -> then install sp2 = not recommended. It'l clog the hard drive since it will modify, add and delete files again ang again. whilst an integrated install would do all those fixes in one whole sweep.

I also highly suggest to interate your sp2 with RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack. SP2 is at least 18 months old and there has been a lot of critical patches since it's release. By making a new installation CD by integrating this achive into the current windows xp cd w/sp2 using nlite you can remove the burden of having to download all the post sp2 hotfixes from microsoft.