Admins who support Windows XP in the enterprise will have at least one thing to be thankful for tomorrow: Windows XP Service Pack 3 [1]. While the final service pack for the aging OS won’t be available until early next year, Microsoft did manage to send out a near-final release candidate to testers this week, thereby proving that they’re on track for a first half of 2008 release. “Late last week, Windows XP SP3 was made available to about 15,000 beta testers,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “A broader beta will be available at a later date. We are targeting 1H 2008 for the release of XP SP3 RTM, though our timing will always be based on customer feedback as a first priority.” As we’ve previously mentioned, Windows Vista SP1 also looks to be on track for a 1H 2008 release [2], though it remains unclear whether or not the two service packs will be released simultaneously.

For more on Windows XP SP3:
– see this ZDnet blog post [3]