XP SP2 by Christmas for most UK IT managers

Almost three-quarters of UK IT managers plan to roll out XP SP2 and 63 per cent of them plan to do it before Christmas, according to research by emedia for desktop tools outfit LANDesk.

The predominant reason cited for taking the update was security, particularly the extra security provided for wireless devices.

These results were almost the reverse of the verdict of silicon.com's CIO Jury, where two-thirds of CIOs said that they'd wait and let other companies be the pioneers and one-third said that they'd deploy it for security reasons.

IT managers taking the update will have to put their skates on, however. Rolling out XP SP2 will not be a trivial task and it won't be done overnight.

Jon Gifford, LANDesk technical director, said: "Most organisations haven't considered how long it will take and Microsoft hasn't given them any guidance. To follow good practice; testing it in a small environment, doing a staggered rollout to crucial systems and then a rollout, will take several months.

"Rolling out to laptops and other wireless devices can be tricky -- they're rarely connected and when they are they're slow."

The long-awaited XP SP2 will probably become the top headache for IT managers, if it isn't already. It has been continuously delayed and a series of problems have come to light since its initial release.

There are over 40 popular programs that appear to fall down when exposed to XP SP2 and installations which have custom software or even custom-tweaked software will have to be very careful. It is also said to have an effect on the operation of Internet Explorer and Microsoft has had to develop a special patch so that its CRM software will work with the updated OS.