SP3 sucess/Failure Stats

[marx404]

I have always been one who believes in a 6 month moratorium on major
non-critical updates, I refer to this gestation period as the "Final Beta
Stage" or "Guinea-Pig Phase" and calmly read about other's experiences whom
rush to install the latest and greatest with all the vigor expected of any
excited guinea-pig. From what I have collected is that SP3 will not be a
necessity until updates that require it in the future. I have also seen many
a post whereupon single PC owners have experienced slow-down due to
inadequate system resources or hardware/software incompatibilities which
were not present in SP2 but are not inherent in SP3.

I have to laugh at the "not me's" out there that have deployed SP3 across a
domain of cloned corporate OS'es and declare "not me" that all is well, hmm,
if it will work fine on the first clone, than why shouldn't it work well on
all clones? Ditto and kudos to the guy who has also successfully installed
after managing to find the time to memorize every vital KB tidbit and
properly prepare for it. You, yes, you, go sit in the corner, you already
passed the test. This conversation isn't for you, it's for the rest of us
poor bastards.

My point is what are the true stats of Success vs. Failure on individual
home end-users? and other than what I have already stated, is there more of
a risk of blindly installing SP3 with a "let's see what happens" mentality
and less of that warm-safe feeling we all had when installing SP2?

Personally, I have not seen so much trouble with an OS upgrade since the Win
'98 Upgrade CD fiasco and will not envision installing SP3 on my home
computers until I too have that old comfortable "warm safe" feeling that all
will be ok and functional after installation.

 

[Jim]

Personally, I have not seen so much trouble with an OS upgrade since the
Win '98 Upgrade CD fiasco and will not envision installing SP3 on my home
computers until I too have that old comfortable "warm safe" feeling that
all will be ok and functional after installation.

You must not remember all the trouble that many people had with SP2.
I haven't upgraded either one of mine because the desktop is very long in
the tooth (it will be gone sometime next year) and I have another year to
upgrade the laptop.
Of course, you see lots of problems with major upgrades such as this. Only
people with difficulties need to post their troubles.
Jim

 

[Jim]

You must not remember all the trouble that many people had with SP2.
I haven't upgraded either one of mine because the desktop is very long in
the tooth (it will be gone sometime next year) and I have another year to
upgrade the laptop.
Of course, you see lots of problems with major upgrades such as this.
Only people with difficulties need to post their troubles.
Jim

Besides, since I will be 80 when support for SP2 dies, I may not need to
install SP3.
Jim

 

[Galen Somerville]

Besides, since I will be 80 when support for SP2 dies, I may not need to
install SP3.
Jim

I'm already 80 and have put Sp3 on my three computers without a hitch.

Galen

 

[Unknown]

The only people with SP3 installation problems are those with a lot of
useless non-Microsoft programs.

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Hardly anyone posts to a newsgroup or forum to say they installed WinXP SP3
and haven't had a lick of problems since.

WinXP SP3 - Read all prerequisites for a successful installation
http://msmvps.com/blogs/harrywaldro...requisites-for-a-successful-installation.aspx

Free unlimited installation and compatibility support is available for
Windows XP, but only for Service Pack 3 (SP3), until 14 Apr-09. Chat and
e-mail support is available only in the United States and Canada. Go to
http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?gprid=1173 | select "Windows
XP" then select "Windows XP Service Pack 3"
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/


marx404 wrote:

 

[Jim]

Hardly anyone posts to a newsgroup or forum to say they installed WinXP
SP3 and haven't had a lick of problems since.

Agreed. What we see in this newsgroup (among many others) is a self
selecting subset of the population of all XP users. Self selecting subsets
can never be representative of the whole population.
All you can really say is that 100% of the people who have had problems,
have problems..
Jim

 

[Jim]

I'm already 80 and have put Sp3 on my three computers without a hitch.

Galen

Actually, I intended to install SP3 on my laptop a couple of weeks ago. But
I have been too busy dodging hurricanes to worry about such mundane tasks as
this.
I have decided not to touch the desktop because it is a bit too long in the
tooth and may disappear next spring.
Jim

 

[Anteaus]

Having had some experience in the retail industry before branching into IT, I
think this highlights an issue for anyone working on a helpdesk or repair
facility, which sometimes gives a distorted impression of the reliability of
products.

Firstly, it is a truism that you tend not to hear of the good products, only
the ones that go wrong.

Secondly, you are bound to see more examples of popular products that have
gone wrong than of niche-market products that have gone wrong. Yet, the
percentage of popular products which fail may actually be less, even though
the numbers are higher. This may give the false impression that the popular
products are less reliable than the niche-market ones.

This may certainly have some effect on perceived reliability of Windows,
Linux and Mac computers. Macs in particular are such a small market that the
total number of support-incidents must be far less. This may create an
impression that they are more reliable than is actually the case.

Another factor which biases reliability-stats is the question of whether the
user thinks a product is worth repairing. You may see more new, quality-brand
stuff coming in for repair than older or budget stuff. This does not
necessarily mean that the new quality stuff is less reliable, it may instead
relate to whether the owner thinks it worthwhile to pay a repair charge.

 

[Plato]

Personally, I have not seen so much trouble with an OS upgrade since the Win
'98 Upgrade CD fiasco and will not envision installing SP3 on my home
computers until I too have that old comfortable "warm safe" feeling that all
will be ok and functional after installation.

Or, until you need it. No need to get the latest release of XP unless
you NEED it.

 

[marx404]

Please Define "a lot of useless non-Microsoft programs". I have as many M$
apps as I do M$ apps, does this insinuate that installing SP3 will break
them or cause compatibility issues? Please define in a useful manner.