CRN claims
that Microsoft will roll out XP SP3 next Monday. As of Wednesday afternoon
Pacific time, the BitTorrent search engine Mininova listed a 568.73 MB Windows
XP Professional SP3 5503 file available for download. The file, which had 112
seeds and 417 leeches, had been downloaded 2083 times since it was posted
Tuesday, according to the listing. According to the file description notes,
Microsoft will release the final version of XP SP3 on March 24, but the 5503
test build passes all Windows Genuine Advantage checks and is able to download
Windows updates that previous XP SP3 builds weren't able to, which suggests that
it could, in fact, be the final RTM build. When Microsoft released Vista SP1 in
February, the final RTM code was identical to the Vista SP1 Release Candidate
(RC) 1 Refresh 2 test build that was released to a group of 15,000 testers two
weeks earlier. A Microsoft spokesperson, perhaps weary from the months-long
barrage of Vista SP1 related inquiries, said the final version of XP SP3 is
still on target to be released the first half of calendar year 2008, and the XP
SP3 5503 build was a minor interim build released to address one specific issue
for a subset of private beta testers.