The guys at techARP have a good round up of information on the upcoming service pack, which should hit the final stages & be deployed by next February. It'll sure be nice to have all those damn hotfixes + IE7 + WMP11 rolled into one big, phat update...

"Those who are still hanging onto Windows XP (32-bit) will be heartened to know that the Service Pack 3 programme is chugging along nicely. In fact, Microsoft is scheduled to wrap up the Technical Beta and release Service Pack 3 for public beta testing within the next two weeks."