Service Pack 2 Blues
In the April 27 issue of WinXPNews, I wrote a short piece on some of the experiences that our readers have reported with the installation of the technical preview release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. As noted in the article, those ranged from “smooth sailing, no problems at all” to complete system crashes with an inability to restart even in Safe Mode. I detailed the problems my husband had with wireless network connectivity after installing SP2. I also emphasized that readers should remember that as with any pre-release version of software, the service pack should only be installed on test machines, and I went on to point out that many readers were delighted with one of the new features, the pop-up blocker added to Internet Explorer.
The article brought a huge number of reader responses, most of them contributing their own “sometimes it's heaven and sometimes it's hell” stories about SP2. What surprised me, though, was that I received several messages accusing me of being part of the Microsoft-bashing media cabal because of the article. Actually, it was a bit of a refreshing change, since I'm more often accused of being a “shill” for MS (presumably because I don't sing the praises of Linux in the -- note this name, now -- WinXPNews).
In truth, I'm neither. I get very tired of the real Microsoft bashing that occurs on some of the IT and computer book mailing lists to which I belong. Some days it seems everywhere I turn, some open source advocate is slamming MSFT for having the audacity to make a profit for their shareholders instead of giving everything away for free (of course, if they did that, those same people would then slam them for “unfairly undercutting the competition” or some such). The constant refrain of “Microsoft products don't work, Microsoft products aren't secure, and Bill Gates is just too damn rich” seem ubiquitous at times. So I suppose I can understand a little oversensitivity.
But really, people -- reporting on some problems that have been encountered with a pre-release piece of software is in no way meant to cast a bad light on the company that made it. The whole point of making betas and release candidates available to the public is to broaden the base of people to discover any problems in the software, so those problems can be fixed in the final release version. It's part of the process of making software better. Microsoft is to be commended for taking this extra step and (contrary to the opinions of those who bash the company for missed release dates) for delaying finalization of their products so as many bugs as possible can be worked out.