There's an interesting article on IAmNotAGeek that talk about good news in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (they have read all the 200 pages of the official Microsoft documents, good!).
The interesting good news can be resumes as follow:
- A native Bluetooth support (great, with XP sometimes I've problem with Bluetooth stack).
- Windows Installer 3: MS is setting things up for automatic updating of all the applications on your system. Not only that, but it'll only grab the updates that YOU need. It will be also able to create patch packages.
- Alerter and Messenger Services Disabled: the Messenger and Alert services will be set to Disabled as default.
- Boot Time security: In earlier versions of Windows, there is a window of time between when the network stack was running and when Windows Firewall provides protection. This results in the ability for a packet to be received and delivered to a service without Windows Firewall filtering and potentially exposes the computer to vulnerabilities. Now this will be fix.
- IE's Addon Manager: a nice tool to know what plugins were installed for IE and what are used.
- FTP and gopher dropped: These protocols have been removed from the command prompt.
- WinHTTP: Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) provides developers with a server-supported, high-level interface to the HTTP/1.1 Internet protocol. More details here.
It seems to be an interesting package, but my little alarm is these: Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET is will not be fully function with this SP. The developer tool's remote debugging feature won't work because of the Firewall. Another MS product that'll break is the .Net Framework. It'll only break in the Itanium and AMD64's with memory protection turned on.
I hope that possible problems will be solved!
Another interesting new tool ready to download from Microsoft: Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0.
The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or later, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms. Tools include the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Analyzer that simplifies application inventory and compatibility testing, the Windows Application Verifier that assists developers and testers in locating common compatibility issues during the development cycle, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows.
Check it!