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              WINDOWS XP SP2 NOT A WORTHY UPGRADE
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              written by: paranoidxe
              email: paranoidtsi@hotmail.com


Well I could completely waste 30 minutes writing this, but I'm sorta in a
hurry so I'll make it short and sweet. Service Pack 2 is supposed to offer
these security updates and features to improve the security of your machine,
truth is its not worth it.


* Security Center - a pointless feature that lists all your security software
  so you can easily access, configure and update it. Come on, maybe to a 
  newbie this is a useful feature, but for the intermediate user it should
  be no problem upgrading their software manually. Since it is newbie aimed
  it is highly unlikely the person is going to upgrade to SP2 to get this
  feature anyway.

* Internet Explorer Security "Enhancements" - adds the ability to remove
  browser extensions in IE, whoopie..something 3rd party programs have
  been able to do for it...i.e. HijackThis. It includes a pop-up blocker
  and a incredibly annoying info bar to show you just exactly what is going
  on. Internet Explorer is still just the same exploited browser as it was
  before, if you can't make use of the features then you are getting no
  benefits of the supposed "enhanced security".

* Outlook Express has more security updates which includes the inability
  to download jack shit unless you go in and modify the settings manually,
  which is ridicilous.

* Windows XP SP2 has 9 additional patches, I'm not listing them here it would
  waste to much of my time. Anywho, installing SP2 requires you to get these
  patches to be up-to-date...yet keeping SP1 on your machine you would never
  have to install these 9 additional patches on your machine. So install SP2
  just to install extra patches..sounds like a killer deal.

* Compatibility Killer, the changes to the system causes some 3rd party 
  firewalls to fail as well as other misc programs. You will have to upgrade
  some of your programs (if even possible) to be compatible with XP.

* Some HP machines need fixes for System Restore to work in order to be able
  to use System Restore after SP2 is installed.

* A concurrent limit of 10 TCPIP connections at a time, this means if you are
  on a file sharing network and 15 TCPIP are trying to connect, SP2 would
  only process 10 of them first, then go on to the additional 5. This could
  make connections slightly slower. Fortunately there are patches available
  for this problem.

* Generic change in boot screens. They needlessly throw some user confusion
  by changing Windows XP Pro and Windows XP Home boot screens to a simple
  "Windows XP" screen. So this can cause confusion for newbies that think
  they be running Pro when in all actuality they are running Home Edition.



If you can find a reason to install SP2 then go for it, but for my computers
it will NEVER see Service Pack 2 until Service Pack 1 support is completely
dropped which is in 2006.