Silly Automatic Updates.

[Xaven]

'Ello one, 'ello all.

Reinstalling XP with my lovely, shiny, brown SP2 CD.

Would you recommend turning on automatic updates? What's your take on SP3? Should I bother, or will it just be hussy and fussy and useless? I've always had updates completely disabled in the past and never encountered a single, uh, issue. Is there much of an actual advantage for having them?

I'm weening myself out of silly Windows and into scary Linux anyway.

[Samuraid]

SP3 is fine, I haven't noticed much of anything wonky with it. It contains a lot of SP2 updates integrated, so you end up with a lot less clutter in the long run, at least if you install it permanently.

And automatic updates are useful, especially if you don't feel disciplined enough to check for updates manually every Tuesday evening. I personal have it set to the "notify me of updates only but let me install them", because then you get friendly reminders without the unfriendly install interrupting whatever you are doing.

[rubah]

I uh. . .

I installed SP1 well after SP2 came out and never had a problem, so you can infer what my idea about sp3 from sp2 would be.

or sp3 from sp1.

[crono_logical]

If you're happy with SP2, then I'd reckon SP3 is fine since it's mostly security updates really, and not a big revamp like SP2 was over SP1 :p

[Yamaneko]

The only tangible benefit SP3 has to consumers is that all updates for the OS up to March 2008 are included. New features like network access protection compatibility and "black hole" router detection algorithm are really only for enterprise users.

If you don't mind installing eighty or so updates after a clean SP2 install then you shouldn't bother with SP3. You can always use a program called nLite (http://www.nliteos.com/) to extract your XP SP2 disc to your local machine and then slipstream SP3 into the installer and reburn the image to a blank CD.