With the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, not due for at least another two years, what have we got to look forward to in the interim? Well, don't get too excited, but there's a service pack on the way. This went into beta testing last December and should be released, according to Microsoft, this summer. The main thrust of SP2 is security, and one change is that, unlike XP SP1, the firewall will be enabled by default. This, again according to Microsoft, is because users at present have to run a wizard or navigate through the network settings to manually enable it. Which, apparently, they find difficult. There will also be more configuration options, but we'll return to these when the final code is released. SP2 will also close a window of opportunity that at present exists at boot time, in that unfiltered packets can be received in the period between the network loading and the firewall loading.
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