Microsoft has made available the release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3 on its website.

Although its not the final version, the real one which is schedule to be launch in the first of of 2008 will not differ much.

The release candidate of Windows XP SP3 has a download size of 336MB while the full SP3 will be around 70MB. SP3 will be the final major upgrade of the Windows XP operating system

Try if you dare by downloading it here.

via PC World

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I just got the news that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is available for public download. It’s not the final version but at least, its the first release and should be extremely close to the real one. It’s a large download - 32-bit version is between 440 and 550 MB, and the 64-bit version is between 730 and 880 MB - and you might need to uninstall it completely when the full Vista SP1 Final is ready.

Download here.

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For people who appreciate finer laptop accoutrements such as a backlit keyboard and a slot-fed DVD drive, Apple has crafted another tasty offering in the form of the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Sleek, powerful, and able to run Windows as well as the Mac operating system, the MacBook Pro makes a strong case for becoming anyone’s ultimate notebook.

Equipped with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 processor, the maximum 4GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and nVidia’s new top-of-the-line notebook graphics card, the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT, our $2949 test unit set new speed records. The MacBook Pro outperformed the rest of the notebooks we tested, all of which claim Windows as their primary–nay, their only–operating system. We loaded Windows Vista Home Premium on the Apple notebook, and it snagged a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88. In games it achieved a blazing frame rate of 141 frames per second in Far Cry (with antialiasing turned off).

At 6.6 pounds and just 1 inch thick, the MacBook Pro is the lightest 17-inch notebook available. But it has no memory card slots and only three USB ports, and it comes configured with an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of the more versatile ExpressCard/54 slot. Though it has Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi, built-in cellular broadband is not an option. On the other hand, video editors will be happy to have not one but two FireWire ports. Battery life was disappointing: Apple pegs it at 5.7 hours on one charge, but in our tests we got less than 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Nevertheless, the MacBook Pro is elegantly designed and remarkably mobile for a 17-inch notebook.

– Carla Thornton, PC World

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If you’re a computer company, what on earth do you add to the sixth annual version of your operating system?

It’s not as though there are any glaring holes left. Nobody is still crying out for a better way to organize photos.

That’s the challenge that Apple faced in developing Mac OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard, which goes on sale after a four-month delay. Price: $110 online, $190 for a family pack, or free on a new Mac. As Steve Jobs points out, for that money, “everyone gets the Ultimate version.” (That’s a swipe at Microsoft, which sells Windows Vista in at least five versions costing as much as $330 for the Ultimate).

Microsoft had it a little easier with Vista, because everybody knew what Windows needed: better security. Maybe Mac OS X is harder to hack, or maybe the virus writers consider the Mac’s 8 percent market share too piddling to bother with. But in its six years, Mac OS X hasn’t experienced a single virus outbreak or spyware infestation. Read the rest of this entry »

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