Comments on: IBM goes slow on XP update

As Microsoft ships Service Pack 2 to manufacturing, Big Blue tells employees to not install the software, pending compatibility tests.

keystone cops vs. the three stooges

In the long awaited release of SP2, There must be
many Microsoft competitors snickering to themselves.
It is well known that many savy PC users have already installed the "new advanced secrity" tools that SP2 is just now making a part of their system.
It seems that Microsoft is playing cath-up ball.

[waynehapp]

Done entirely in India

That's the rumor why product quality is so high in XP Pack 2.

[MediaNoxStella]

Let's pray

let's hope SP2 is not the same as SP1, I still don't trust Microsoft's package, although they spent lots time on this one. I think I would wait one or two weeks to upgrade my computers

[Tex Murphy PI]

Let's hope SOMETHING breaks!

Here's why...

To maintain maximum application compatibility, MS has had to allow Windows to accept some programs that "break" the rules for the sake of compatibility.

It also introduced a whole slew of programming methods that (in hindsight) should not have been allowed to exist in the first place!

If MS did their homework, then locking up these holes should cause quite a few applications to fail.

Granted, something will always break because of patching, this SP should also allow companies to find other applications that should have been programmed more "properly."

Of course, nobody will really know why the applications broke - other than the fact that it did break.

At least that's the perversed point of view I'm looking at it from.

[Dachi]

But I thought they were the glue?

The company that is the very glue that lets buisness systems work togeather can't manage a windows service pack? wow.

Use a better example than IBM

The fact that IBM is behind on this should come as no suprise to anyone. IBM hasn't even updated their own applications to use Sun's version of Java -- IBM still requires their employees to run Microsoft's Java VM in order to run their internal applications. Microsoft's Java VM hasn't been available for months now. What a joke. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes about "big blue"'s inability to manage applications. More on this, though -- IBM is using web page spawns to run many of their applications, and isn't following Microsoft's security best practices. So -- yes -- many of their apps are going to break if their employees run XP SP2. This is to be expected though. They should have RTFM'd. Companies that understand how to write code in the Microsoft space, and who have followed Microsoft's well documented best practices won't have this problem.