XP Service Pack 2: Microsoft wants you to spread the word

In February, following a series of security alerts and sloppy patching from home users, Microsoft thought the idea of dishing out a CD would help. Now, faced with the much more difficult task of getting Windows XP Service Pack 2 onto users' machines, what is the Redmond behemoth planning to get home and businesses 'packed-up'?

Plans for distribution and promotion aren't final, according to the software giant, but there are some strategies on the table for reaching the XP user at home or at work.

The enterprise user is the easy bit, said Paul Randle, XP product manager: "It's more business as usual...we have more engagement with our enterprise customers."

Independent software vendors and original equipment manufacturers will have their helpdesks ready-prepped by Microsoft and will have a 90-day readiness deadline to get all their products bundled with the service pack.

A company with 1,000 seats running XP is a lot more traceable and likely to be in more regular contact with Microsoft than a sole trader running a business out of his or her front room who may not have filled in their contact details when they registered their copy of XP.

Expect to see SP2 ready for download from the Microsoft website as a priority. With a file size of 80MB, dial-up users might be less than pleased at the prospect of four hours of downloading.

The option of a mass mailout is also popular with Microsoft and quite probably with home users - judging by the popularity of the security patch CD release. This time, Redmond has a large database holding the details of users who bought XP and can contact them with the news, rather than waiting for the orders to roll in.

However, unlike the security patch CD, which hit doormats countrywide without cash changing hands, SP2 will cost users.

Not for the CD itself but for the post and packaging - no figure is currently confirmed but Randle said the £2 mark might be a good bet. Dial-up customers might be slightly annoyed to find they're being charged by a company with tens of billions of dollars in the bank.

Print and online ads are likely to form a part of the SP2 education campaign, as are deals with retailers such as Dixons, who can do some point-of-sale promotion and conceivably inform their customer database of the new release.

One of the more interesting schemes under discussion is Microsoft tapping up the evangelism of the IT pro, asking its own employees to spread the word among friends and relatives in the non-Microsoft world.

But it doesn't stop there. Microsoft has got its eyes on wooing the home-user tech evangelists and early adopters in the wider world for its own ends.

Microsoft is now bouncing around the idea of tech clubs, where home users in the know about SP2 encourage their initiated friends to join in and get downloading.