Microsoft Won't Release XP SP2 Until '04

Microsoft let the information slip out by posting on Friday a Windows Service Pack Road Map on its Windows Lifecycle Web site that specified a third quarter, 2004, release for the Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). While getting specific down to the calendar quarter was an error, SP2 won't be available until sometime around the middle of next year, said a Microsoft spokesperson on Monday.

That runs counter to earlier expectations by analysts and users, who anticipated a release before the end of 2003, based on other operating systems' track record with service pack updates.

Windows XP, which released in October, 2001, has been updated with just one pack, SP1, which debuted in September, 2002.

If the road map holds to form - and one takes 'mid-year' to mean the end of June, 2004, the span between XP service packs will be approximately 20 months.

"That's an awfully long time to have to wait for updates," said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that concentrates on Microsoft's moves.

"I just don't see why Microsoft can't manage to do a service pack for Windows XP and Windows Server every six months," said Cherry. "That's not an inappropriate time frame."

Microsoft's defended the long dry spell by touting the interim solution: its patch-providing service, WindowsUpdate. "WindowsUpdate has been a great delivery mechanism between service packs," said a spokesperson for the Redmond, Wash.-based developer.

Microsoft's service packs are essentially aggregates of all the security fixes, driver updates, and feature additions that Microsoft has issued since the product debuted, or since the previous service pack. Users who don't regularly update their operating system software via Microsoft's WindowsUpdate site rely on service packs to bring them up-to-date, and PC manufacturers use them to provide a relatively current version of the Windows OS that they bundle with their machines.

The long time between service packs caught several analysts by surprise. Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Media's Microsoft Monitor, said that the two-year gap between service packs departs from the norm established by Windows 2000, for which four packs have been released since its February, 2000, release. Windows 2000 averaged a new service pack every 10 months.

"I wouldn't characterize it as a delay," said Wilcox, since Microsoft has never publicly committed to a release for Windows XP's SP2. "But it's definitely on a longer cycle than Windows 2000."

Wilcox believes that the longer-than-usual spread between service packs may mean that when SP2 does release, it will be offer more than just the typical collection of patches and fixes. "Such a long time [between packs] suggests to me that Microsoft could be working on something more substantive." Among his guesses: updates to XP that add features to support both the Media Center Edition and the Tablet PC.

Among the features that Microsoft might be adding to SP2, Wilcox cited concurrent log-on. Such a feature, he said, would be very useful to Media Center, Microsoft's effort to blend consumer entertainment and computing. "It would let one person watch TV, while another worked on the computer," he said.

That said, a two-year span between service packs could be a problem for businesses which rely on them to do irregular updates, rather than run the risk of continually applying patches which may create incompatibilities between the OS and their mission-critical software.

"Businesses and Microsoft have to get together and be much smarter about the whole patch management issue," he said. Wilcox noted that last week's Blaster worm exposed the weak links in Microsoft's approach to patching: users who don't update their systems. The vulnerability that Blaster exploited was made public on July 16, and yet "a lot of businesses did not update their computers" before the worm made an appearance on August 11.

Other sources close to Microsoft speculated that the giant is able to put its attention to just one thing at a time, and for the moment, that thing is Longhorn. Not Windows XP.

"I don't think that Microsoft can do multiple things at once," one source said. Longhorn, which most expect to release to developers at the upcoming Microsoft Professional Developers Conference slated for October in Los Angeles, may be using up all the company's engineering resources.

Wilcox, for one, thinks that's unlikely, since his take is that Longhorn isn't nearly as far along as most people think. "Don't hold your breath. Longhorn won't be out in a public release until 2006."

Instead, he sees the delay between XP service packs as proof that Microsoft feels comfortable about how its Automatic Updates feature - which in Windows XP automatically downloads updates and then notifies the user that they're ready to install - handles things.

"The lack of a service pack this year isn't a crisis," he said. "It's a concern for businesses that don't keep up to date on patches, but that can be addressed by turning on the Automatic Updates feature."

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This story courtesy of TechWeb News.