... so has anyone taken the deep plunge yet? ... just curious if anyone has yet and if they had any oddball program/game misfits ... remote connection problems? ... vpn issues?

I d/l it the day it came out but havent installed it yet

and this is why

"New things also comes to the os itself in the form of shut down for invalid xp cd key."

I hate to put the damn CD in for every game I play

One of my buddies just spent a lot of time trying to salvage a WinXP SP2 install that wouldn't do http or ftp. It could ping just fine, updated Ad-aware just fine, but no browsing, and no ftp. After hours of trying, he gave up fixing that install and formatted the disk.

Also, by default it enables all the MS 'security' features such as the Internet Connection Firewall and the rudimentary, badly coded pop-up blocking that causes Microsoft Update to become inaccessible.

From what I've heard, SP2 for XP is the biggest piece of crap since WinME

yeah, just did it...
XP Pro machine is my gateway computer...
also just installed a linksys wireless router after my switch would not jive w/my new broadband connection...
have not ran any games since install...
everything seemed to come up ok,didn't loose my home network or anything...
I like the firewall...

Yeah, you'll like that firewall right up until the day a virus or trojan makes it through (I suspect it won't be long) and you realize that like all Microsoft products, it is so rife with security holes that it ends up introducing more hazards than it prevents.

Black Ice, Zonealarm, and Trend Micro's Personal Firewall are all quality Windows firewalls that can be acquired cheaply.

I'm with you on the MicroCrap software...
going to install a new Linux on my internet cruiser...
Mandrake,Gentoo,fedora,slackware....
old version of Mandrake currently installed, going to try another current version of something...
I fear all Windows prodducts when it comes to security...
Thanks for the firewall info, I'll look into that...

... I wonder whats up with the update where they give you the big warning about removing spyware before loading SP2 with the warning that not doing so can render your system unuseable ...


... and I think the XP CD key thing is just for the op-sys not other games.

I highly reccomend gentoo, if you have a couple days to spare to get it fully up and running (or longer if you don't have a really fast machine)

It compiles pretty much everything from source code specifically for your machine and according to the options you set. It's a very fast and powerful OS, but you do have to have the desire to tinker with it a lot. The 'emerge' feature is great, it makes application management a snap.

Just downloaded and installed all 260M of it yesterday. Surprisingly, not only does everything still work, but several shell glitches that were annoying me were miraculously repaired. Not only that, but the system ran faster. Go figure. I turned off the default firewall immediately to avoid any network issues.

... are you sure you didnt upgrade from 98?