Service Pack?!

Service Packs... what's up with that name, more importantly what's up with Service Packs in general? It seems like every time we turn around there's another service pack for another product that needs to be installed. And if you run a corporate network, that means distributing that to umpteen thousand machines... that is after testing to verify it doesn't break anything and interoperability is still a function. It seems that half the time with service packs it's like installing a whole new software package. And truth being told, sometimes it literally is I guess. I suppose it would be easy to sit and criticize service packs assuming there wasn't any real benefit to them, but fortunately for software vendors, that isn't the case.
Notification went out yesterday that Service Pack 2 was available for immediate download for Microsoft Office 2007. Being that I was at a tradeshow, I had to wait until I was home to download the install to my laptop. SP installs are typically not *small* downloads by any stretch of the imagination. This one weighs in at 290mb! There have been a few qualms with Office 2007, seems to be most geared around Outlook. I have been extremely happy with the whole suite minus the varying annoyances. One for me was that I had to download a separate install to be able to save files as a PDF or XPS file, after it had been there natively in the Beta version. Viola, SP2 to the rescue. For those of you OpenSource fans, it has also added the OpenDocument Format (ODF)! This has been something that I have appriciated about service packs: it's not only break/fix issues, but also adds features and components that either missed the initial install or has been requesed and added. Nonetheless, it's always good to see new features coming out.
Back to the download... after downloading, I shut down my A/V software like a good little minion and proceeded the install.

I hadn't been able to do *all* my homework on the download yet, so I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take. Noticing the 290mb install, I figured it could go for a while. Honestly though, it was relatively quick, probably taking 10 minutes or so? I kinda lost count watching DWTS...
After install completed, *shocker* I needed to reboot my computer. I complied, and after it was back up I promptly went to word to examine the new version numbers.

Noticing nothing exciting there really, I looked in the menu to notice that the ODF and PDF/XPS options were indeed there. I fired up Outlook, and it took a few minutes to configure, like it hadn't been opened before, then finally launched. I have opened and closed Outlook several times since then and haven't seen any issues so far. So MS, kudos to you for a very smooth service pack! To get all the info and link to the download see- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195

And as a side not, NO not every post on this blog will be about MS or MS products. It's just what I'm dealing with currently. Stay tuned for some security, antivirus, industry posts coming to a blog near you...