Microsoft Windows

LOL. This guy just never stops. Which I'm sort of OK with, because he's such a train wreck. Here's what happened. Yesterday, bloggers over at Neowin spied a page on the Microsoft Web site stating that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) had been released on March 31, 2008. Finally, our misguided buddy Kevin McLaughlin over at ChannelWeb had the evidence he needed to continue his tirade over the non-issue of the release date of XP SP3 (a tirade I have repeatedly disproven here, here and here). Thrill to the evocative language he uses here, by the way: After weeks of intense speculation in the blogosphere and within Microsoft's channel, Microsoft has finally released Windows XP service pack 3 to manufacturing, and has done so with a minimum of fanfare. A Microsoft partner who requested anonymity confirmed that XP SP3 was released to manufacturing this week to enterprises, and said it should take about three weeks for Microsoft to ramp up production of the media to deliver XP SP3 to the masses. Many solution providers believe Microsoft is dragging its feet on releasing XP SP3 for fear that it might divert attention away from Vista. There's just one problem. It's not true. (Like everyone but Kevin McLaughlin didn't see this one coming.) XP SP3 was not released on March 31. And it's still on track for H1 2008, as always. How do we know this? Because ZD blogger Mary Jo Foley took ten seconds to compose an email to Microsoft, which told her that the Web page was just a mistype: Microsoft officials told me on April 2 the date was a typo and that XP SP3 still has not RTM’d. Ten second of research. Sometimes that's all it takes. Fact check time I'd like to point out that what this guy has done, again, is invent the news. I mentioned in previous posts how he did this, but he continues wagging the dog in this one: After weeks of intense speculation in the blogosphere and within Microsoft's channel... He invented this speculation with his invented ne

byPaul Thurrott