The XP SP2 saga: II
p2pnet.net News:- “For anyone unable or unwilling to download SP2 from Bittorrent, ed2k, or other P2P network, here is a link to M$’s secret ‘unpublished’ download page,” says a p2pnet Reader’s Write here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en
“My suggestion for slow modems: For the ultimate download method, try eDonkey2000. It will let you download from both http/ftp sites and the ed2k network simultaneously. So when M$ unplugs their not-for-public-consumption download server – which might be any day now – you can still complete the unfinished download via eDonkey P2P network. A few other P2P clients are also multi-network capable.
“Isn’t P2P great?”
August 11th, 2004 at 4:05 am
This upgrade is not intended for consumers. It is the Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers, duh, and is twice the size of the comsumer version that is coming.
Also, MS doesn’t need help disseminating it, they have bugs in it that fuck-up some 3rd party applications that have to be worked out. So, go ahead – download it and suffer with the problems.
SP2 really isn’t anything anyway – just more MS security hype (actually simply changes many default security settings to high), and oh, IE gets a pop-up blocker – ohhh, ahhh (and a few more useless things like security center).
SP2 is designed for the average user, defined by Microsoft as someone who does not change default settings or applications (why is IE #1?); 80% of the computing public.
Bring on the update MS, tech. support people are gearing up for the flood of calls over fucked up systems. The user experience is going to be compromised with this update – wait and see. MS really couldn’t fix XP – so they created SP2 to lock down the system – you’ll get a pop-up windows to confirm most choices for instance while browsing.
You should wait for MS to release the consumer version, so most of the bugs are worked out.
If you know a little about security now (have a router/firewall and know not to open unknow e-mail attachments etc.) you will be just fine without SP2 and should wait for SP3 (Longhorn) in 2006.
August 11th, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Actually, this is the final release. The file size will be exactly that, and not half as you stated. Install it and you will see that it is far different from sp2 release candidate.