Well, SP2 is pretty much a hazard. Oh, and DynastyNet is T-O-A-S-T. I would NEVER be dumb enough to install SP2 though, and I can call that my professional opinion. :)

Well I would never be rude enough to insult the many sound technical minded people who have already installed it.

SP2 can and will totally screw up some pc's, I have it installed on my pc and no problems, I have tried to install it on other pc's and it crashed it(was lucky I FINALLY save it with out redueing it), it is not the total answer that Microsoft thought it would be. I think it depends on what software you have installed on your pc, wether it will work OK or not.

I've seen it screw computers with no actual symptoms of them being screwed, too. Sometimes it'll be all nice and fine then suddenly decide your legitimate version of XP is pirated and your computer gets fragged. I've just seen too much to trust these things anymore. I'm learning the ins and outs of Linux and use it for a lot of things now...word of warning though, SuSE is a box of bugs right now. Not sure what ISN'T but I've heard a lot of good about Gentoo.

I find that to be an extremely offensive comment....

Me too, but I thought Lilith's response was great.

I've installed SP2 on three computers (two of mine and one of a friend's) and had no dramas at all.... I love it.

CasperTG

Not installing service packs is also an excellent way to induce an inexplicable "fragging" of your Windows installation. It's a case-by-case thing and I can give you professional opinions from the systems building and repair techs I work a few feet from to back that up. SP2 may cause some problems to some people but I'd hardly advocate avoiding it as a general rule nor call people stupid for installing it. At least they're getting the message that software should be updated, an awareness that was hardly common not all that long ago.

As for Gentoo, consider it if you've got a stable and fast Internet connection (something I don't have right at this very moment) and have no problems configuring your system by editing text files, writing your own init scripts, etc. I think MilkToast runs it. Personally I run Slackware at home.

Such a pity...

We should correct this at once! ;)

Well I know myself that i wouldn't install sp2, i work for an isp tech support and we get nothing but complaints about it, dunno maybe i'll install it one day.

but there's a FREE tech support line that microsoft has set up for sp2 related crap

it's 1-888-SP2-HELP

Errrrr isnt the whole point of tech support to recieve complaints....those that have it successfully installed are hardly going to need to ring for help are they *LOL*

^^^ :confused: lmfao

re:
and

While not an IT professional I am related to one (my father) whom works with all the wonders of Microsoft and variants. Until a few weeks ago they would not install SP2 on their machines because of some incompatabilities with some specialized networking tools that they use. In any case, the reason for the problem was not actually Microsoft (Gasp!) but the fact that the tools exploited a hole that MS had left. Now that it was closed some stuff stopped working. It took a while but the tools were patched and now will work with SP2. They are deploying it to a few thousand PCs as I type this.

In any case, at home I am very happy with SP2 running on my two primary machines. I have also installed it at work with no more issues than getting the connections sorted out. At this time if folks ask me if I would recommend it, my answer is "yes." The pop-up blocker in IE is reason enough in my opinion (of course I use Firefox so that did not affect my reasoning for installing it on my PCs).

As for Linux. We run, and I also have a PC with that in my office, a few flavors at work. By far the best of the recent batch I have seen is Gentoo. The only catch is that it really likes to have a good high speed internet connection to keep itself updated. You can install from the precompiled binaries and CD images, but the idea behind it is how it updates and works so not allowing that really means you may want to look at other installations. As for Gentoo we run that on a whole bunch of machines with no issues (even on a Virtual Machine running on a Win 2k server, which has an uptime of >1 year!). The most recent success was with the 64bit version on some new Athlon64s we are deploying.

OK... enough out of me for now.