Goodies and fixes in WinXP SP1

Microsoft will ship Service Pack 1 in Q3 this year, a little later than expected. But from the sound of it the company is planning SP1 more as a bundle of goodies and enhancements than as a plain old fix roll-up. It'll include support for the Mira and Freestyle technologies Microsoft intends to unleash on us, and will also apparently support Tablet PCs, which are due out later this year, John Lettice writes .

Freestyle and Mira are intended as enabling technologies for the home, Mira being support for smart displays, while Freestyle is for home entertainment/multimedia systems. They are not obviously receptive to being sold as separate new operating systems, indeed as they're only going to be any use if you've got the right hardware, there seems precious little point in Microsoft even thinking about selling them as separate software products. Tablet PC, meanwhile, was originally touted as running Windows XP, Tablet Edition. Again, not a lot of point in buying this separately from the hardware, but you can see what's missing from this picture.

Full Story at The Register USA WinXP SP1 to combine new goodies with the fixes