You wait for one bus to come along, and then three come along at once!!

Microsoft have announced the welcome news that XP, Vista and Office 2007 are to get new service packs, with the release candidates having already been released.

XP will be updated to SP3 which wont add any significant capability, rather just combine the hotfixes from SP2 into one nice and neat package. You will have to have SP1 already installed though as the original 2001 release version is no longer supported. This is to be the last pack released for Windows XP.

Vista is getting the long awaited SP1 which will fix a variety of bugs and combine all the hotfixes. Also included are better device driver support, a faster file copying algorithm and power consumption improvements for laptops.

Should I install the release candidate?

Unless you're really keen, it will probably be best to wait until June (ish) when the final version is released. RC1 will have had most of the bugs removed, but you never know. This is especially for the Vista SP as you have to uninstall it before installing the final version.