Windows XP SP3 to hit April 29th

For those of you who still have Windows XP or are currently supporting it in your enterprise (that is a lot of you) you are probably wondering when Microsoft plans on making Service Pack 3 available for Windows XP? Well, the guys over at Neowin claim to have gotten their hands on the internal release schedule for the latest service pack. The good news is that you will be able to get your hands on SP3 by the end of the month, if not sooner.

It seems that by April 21st, the service pack will be released to OEMs, Volume License, Connect, MSDN and TechNet subscribers. By April 29th, SP3 will be available through Microsoft Update, Windows Update and Download Center. Then by June 10th everyone who has had Automatic Updates turned on can expect to receive it as well. The biggest advantage of Service Pack 3, besides the fact that it is a full roll-up of previous security packs, is that it will introduce some additional security features into Windows XP which are currently only found in Windows Vista.

This will be an important service pack for end users, but more importantly for enterprise customers. Enterprise customers will be able to take advantage of some of the security features of Vista without having to go through a massive deployment to introduce them. In the end, SP3 is just ensuring further longevity of Windows XP. Unknowingly, Microsoft may be giving customers yet another reason not to upgrade to Vista yet.