I too would have thought that a final all-embracing bumper-bundle of XP
updates (call it SP4) would have been a good idea. However, would a
service pack make you have some of the updates you didn't really want?
This brings up a question. What have the updates since SP3 really done?
Since I cant install them on dialup, I have not. I have SP3 saved and
update to there. I'm aware that soem of the updates are security
related. Those I'd like to get. But what else is there? Is any of it
really needed? I'd think that by the time to they got to SP3, that all
the bugs were worked out. I'll take a guess that there may be some
features added to Media Player. I know there is a update for IE8 (which
I have a a separate file). What else is there? I'd think one would
need to be a real computer whizz to know all the details.
From what you said here, if there was a SP4 released, couldn't it be
made selective, so the user could select what they want? I know when I
install SP3, it just does it, but for example, when I installed XP or
even Win98, I can choose to install or not install certain things, such
as the games, or specific utilities, or that feature that for people
with disabilities (cant think of the name of that). I can also go back
and remove parts later. I removed OE and Windows Messenger recently
from one of my new installs, because I will never use them. On my Win98
computer, I removed IE, which is mostly a part of the actual OS, but
there is a way to remove the part that loads as a browser. I removed
that years ago, and it did not hurt anything, in fact it made the OS run
faster.
It would be nice to see a text file that actually shows what all the
updates are. If i could see such a list, and noticed something that
seems real important, I'd probably download those as files. Thats one
nice thing about using Win98, it dont attempt to install them, it just
saves them. I guess the same thing could be done if booted from Linux
or any other OS.