Okay, we've all heard its out there, and even though my Windows Update applet hasn't asked me to install it yet, SP2 is looming large on the horizon (and easily available all over the net). I've played with it on virtual machines, and heard some generally good chatter from various folk who are using it, but not on highly tweaked, performance intensive machines. If you check
http://news.google.com or
http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com or
http://news.cnet.com or
http://www.microsoft-watch.com you'll see that there are plenty of articles on various apps SP2 seems to break. My general recommendation is this: If you're not planning on doing a fresh install/re-install of Windows XP anyway, don't bother with it until you know it doesn't break your favorite game, app, etc. I use a tweaked version of uxtheme.dll to allow me some variations beyond the 3 basic luna shell styles, and I'm not quite sure whether SP2 will break this or not (I know SP1 did until a new version of the file was released). So, unless you're building a PC for the grandma, I wouldn't waste time on it yet. Be warned though, it has more to it than just the cute security stuff you're hearing about, there are a lot of code corrections that are supposed to speed up the XP experience--some of these might be worth getting. The question is this: If it doesn't work on your machine, do you have the time and resources to rebuild it with SP1? You make the call.
- Hutch
UPDATE: Check out this document from Microsoft detailing the growing list of apps that have SP2 issues here--
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=842242
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