Although we are almost a month away, what I have heard from the news and evaluations till now, I am seriously considering not to apply the XP SP2 patch.

At this moment, I think the problem outweight the benefits of installing the XP SP2. (But this might change when the patch is released and I get more comments from the users who are going to apply it.) Although there are number of people who are have applied the latest build and found not many problems.

Here is a list of major changes in XP SP2 and my 2 cents:

• IE will block pop-up by default
  Good! But I have switched to Firefox.
• XPSP2 will limit your max. connections/sec
  Although a good idea to delay / prevent the spread of viruses. But then I would limit few of my applications performance.
• After SP2, more pirated copies will not be allowed to get updates from WindowsUpdate service
  Microsoft is strategically wrong in doing so.
• Firewall would be enabled by default and is going to be more aggresive
  Excellent! Should have done it from the intial release.
• Update service is going to remind you often (read nagging)
  Although this is good for the majority of the users, but it does give me the impression of nagging.
• A more complaint IE
  Good! But then taking the track record of IE in this segment, I 'll belive it when I see it.
• Usual security pack
  Everybody wants its security vulnerabilities patch. So do I!