OSNews

Internet Explorer and Outlook Express have undergone some changes. A built in pop-up blocker for IE and stronger mail handling for Outlook Express. The pop-up blocker for IE works very well and blocks many of the pop-ups that the Google and MSN toolbar do. The only thing I would do different is add Tabbed browsing but considering how long it took Microsoft to put in a pop-up blocker, I wont hold my breath and wait for tabbed browsing. Outlook Express has undergone several changes that makes it not such a virus ally. Outlook Express will no longer automatically launch file attachments and has a different handling for HTML e-mail. Windows itself has safegaurds when you are launching downloaded attachments. Unfortunately the only ones who will be able to take advantage of these new features are Windows XP and Longhorn users. Internet Explorer and Outlook Express will no longer be developed as a standalone product for previous versions of Windows such as 9x/Me/NT 4/2000. We will soon see how this works out for Microsoft.

Pet peeves

Ok this is my section where I get to tear into Microsoft for bugs and other things that they got wrong. Being as this is a beta I will not be as brutal as I normally would be. First, the beta of Windows Installer 3 does not work with older programs. I was unable to Install Adobe Acrobat 6, CDBurnerXP Pro, Easy CD/DVD Creator. The installer kept telling me I was trying to install in Safe Mode which I wasnt, after further testing anything with a .msi extention was not going to cooperate. My Netgear wireless router quit working and I couldnt bring it back up, uninstall the service pack it worked just fine. My CD Burner would not work at all with Microsofts internal CD Burning software it would not detect the disk. Uninstalled Service Pack 2 and it worked again. On my Dell Inspiron that I used as a test laptop my D-Link wirless PCMCIA card kept telling me I had to reinstall the drivers everytime I would boot up the computer, uninstalled Service Pack 2 and it worked fine again. I also like the Microsoft Dialog that asks you what you want to do when you insert removable media and that has been taken out in Service Pack 2 (or it just wasnt working). I did report everythng that went wrong to Microsoft and the respective companies so there should be no reason why it will not work in the final SP2

Highlights

The much improved firewall and the Security Center are very big highlights, both are easy to use and configure. Pop up blocking in Internet Explorer is definitely a plus. As for application compatibility all of my installed applications worked very well even my Open Source applications such as The GIMP, OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird worked and did not have any ill effects because of the update. Speed of the systems tested also seemed to be better.

Conclusion

For the most part besides a few problems I did enjoy testing Service Pack 2. Microsoft has really focused on the security side of things in this service pack but they need to improve functionality. As always in regards to beta software, my advice is if you have the time and the patience as well as an extra computer, help beta test and be sure to send feedback to Microsoft. There are a hundred different computer configurations out there and the more people that help beta test helps ensure that Microsoft “gets it right”. Do not use this Release Candadite on a production main machine otherwise you are just inviting disaster into your life. Furthermore, even when the final version comes out be sure you test everything before you upgrade your machines just to make sure all your major apps still run, or install. I will revisit XP Service Pack 2 when the final version comes out to let everyone know what has been fixed.

About The Author
Roberto J Dohnert is a Unix/Linux and Windows Consultant and software developer. His first introduction to Unix based systems dates back to NeXTStep. He is a member of the GNU Darwin Distribution and has made several contributions to that and other projects. His personal webpage is here.