XP SP1--big size, little impact
No argument on the size issue--it's immense and it needs gobs of free disk space to install itself. That it doesn't have much visible impact on the system is a good thing.
There was a time when Microsoft took a lot of heat for introducing new features into service packs, which are typically supposed to be conglomerations of bug fixes. There are a few new features in SP1, but only a few, and you'd generally have to go looking for them or you wouldn't know they were there.
SP1 adds USB 2.0 support into the OS, but Microsoft's SP1 site says Bluetooth support won't come till this fall. SP1 also makes the Microsoft Java VM available once more; the download-on-first-use version has been unavailable for a few months now.
I've found one change that has escaped general attention: The WiFi "Zero Config" dialogs have changed somewhat, especially for WEP configuration. Prior to SP1 Windows XP had, as I said last week, a confusing WEP interface, which is par for the course for WEP interfaces. Microsoft has simplified the interface: There is a single "Network Key" entry (and a confirmation field where you repeat it). You'd never know because it's completely undocumented, but supposedly you can enter either an ASCII or hex key and it figures it out. I haven't gotten this to work yet, so I'm still looking into it.
The most famous new "feature" in SP--pursuant to Microsoft's proposed settlement with the Department of Justice and half the states--is the addition of the Set Program Access and Defaults dialog. The idea behind it is to let users (and OEMs, through different facilities) configure the default browser, e-mail client, media player, instant messenger, and Java VM in XP. The Set Program Access and Defaults tool offers no help or documentation (none that I could find in Windows itself), but Microsoft offers an online document with instructions.
Third-party "middleware" authors must make modifications to their programs so that this utility can find them. It's easy to do: You just set a bunch of registry entries, and instructions on how to do it have been available for months. If your favorite middleware doesn't do this yet, it's the author's fault. And in fact, since it's just registry entries, individual users and third parties could simply write .REG files to make the necessary settings for versions of Netscape and Opera, for example, for which there are no default settings. Perhaps someone's already done this.
Or perhaps nobody cares because the feature accomplishes nothing meaningful. If you want to use these programs nothing stops you from doing so. Setting non-Microsoft products as default middleware removes the most obvious end-user access to the Microsoft programs, but it doesn't remove the programs.
Incidentally, it appears to be impossible for Microsoft to implement a new feature that's not scriptable. You can even open the Set Program Access and Defaults dialog via a Web page, but only if you're using Internet Explorer.
And of course SP1 consolidates a multitude of old bug fixes and adds many new ones. Click here for a list of all 308 of them.
Microsoft has been testing XP SP1 long enough that the release notes already contain a list of new bugs introduced by SP1 (my favorite: Q328403, "Anarchy Online Stops Responding When Dungeon Door Slides Open To Reveal Foe").
After installing SP1 I visited the Windows Update site and was surprised to see that several previously listed entries had been uninstalled from my system. Some are reasonable, such as the upgrade to Windows Movie Maker--I don't want it. But some, like the .Net Framework Service Pack 2, seem like they should be in the main service pack.
So maybe SP1 isn't so boring after all, especially for Anarchy Online users. The most important part is that a large number of bugs are fixed by it and that new systems will ship with those fixes.
Were you expecting more from the first service pack for Windows XP? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.