Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Key Features in Service Pack 1

Released in 2002, Service Pack 1 aimed to address the antitrust lawsuit filed against Microsoft at the time, as well as fix some of the security problems discovered in the original Windows XP release. Most of the fixes were not visible to end users—the Product Activation system was retooled to help lock out pirate users; compatibility fixes were added for applications originally written for Windows 98/2000; and support for USB 2.0, .NET Framework, Tablet PCs, and other technologies was added. (Full information on SP1 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp1/default.mspx).

Set Program Access and Defaults

The biggest new tool in SP1 was the Set Program Access and Defaults utility, which is found at the top of the Start menu or via the Add or Remove Programs control panel. It offers a very simple way of telling Windows which web browser, email program, instant messenger, media player, and Java virtual machine should be the defaults. As you might imagine, XP initially prefers Internet Explorer for web browsing, Outlook Express for email, Windows Media Player for multimedia, MSN Messenger for online chat, and the Microsoft Virtual Machine for running Java programs. This screen gives you a simple centralized place to reset or change these defaults, so you could, say, have Mozilla Firefox as your default web browser and Trillian for IM. This feature sounds more comprehensive than it is; in fact, it’s basically useless. It doesn’t let you configure ...