As you may be aware, the second release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released on Tuesday, and, yesterday, I installed it. The fact that I'm posting this now means that it seems to work fine, and I haven't noticed any bugs or performance issues as yet.
Back in March, shortly after the first release candidate was unleashed, I wrote this review, going through what was new in the release. I'd do the same for this release but there isn't that much that's different from last time. The only differences I have noticed so far are:
- The startup screen that is shown while Windows is loading (before the GUI appears) has changed - it now just displays "Microsoft Windows XP", instead of having "Home Editon" (in my case) suffixed onto it. It also no longer mentions the years that it is copyrighted, probably because it only goes up to 2001 (yes, Windows XP is not far off 3 years old).
- The new Wireless Network Setup Wizard now has its own control panel icon, along with its wired equivalent.
- The popup blocker in IE makes a different sound when a popup is blocked - before it would make the same sound that a system notification would make.
Yep, that's it, at least from what I can tell. I imagine though that there are many bugfixes for this release though. You also have to remember that these are release candidates so major changes at this stage are unlikely anyway.
