It’s no secret that you could’ve grabbed a copy of SP3 off Microsoft’s server anytime in the last three months with nothing more than a simple registry hack (although up until this last week it wouldn’t have been a final release).
Gone however are the days of registry hacks, as Microsoft has released SP3 into the wild via Windows Update. As far as updates go, this one is pretty unexciting. Though I did notice a small boost in performance on most of the computers I installed it on.
This will certainly come in handy for anyone who builds/programs PCs, as now you don’t have to download 94 critical updates each time you install a fresh copy of XP, instead you can grab all those updates crammed into one download, copy it to a flash drive and save yourself a few hours work.