XP SP2 - First Experiences with RTM Version

I got the RTM version of XP SP2 from MSDN and immediately began the task of installing it on my two main XP workstations, and on my laptop. In other words, loading it onto systems where I have to rebuild if/when it goes wrong! :-) I've done three installs thus far. The first install was from a late beta build (2149 to RTM. It went smoothly and there seem to be no real issues. The second install was from an earlier build of SP2, and it needed to be removed before the RTM version would install. The third install was my laptop (PIV Centrino 1.8) which had been running build 2149 of SP2 beta. Some observations thus far:

• Download from MSDN was OK - not as fast as some MS subsites, but faster than others. Certainly acceptable speed.
• The SP installation process seems to take a long time. I did not measure the first two, but the third (on a 1.7mHz Centrino box) took just under 15 minutes.
• The SP installation package is BIG - the network SP iteself (xpsp2.exe) weighs in at 272MB. Running this executable expaands the SP into 332 MB temporary folder on the local hard drive (although these files are deleted after SP2 finishes installation).
• Upgrading from 2149 did not require me to remove the earlier version of the SP before installing th RTM version. The earlier build on my main workstation DID have to be removed before I could install the RTM version.

For planning purposes, if you've done any widescale deployment of interim beta versions of SP2, it probably makes sense to assume you can't upgrade the earlier version. Thus, allow time to deinstall and then reinstall SPs.

For me, the SP installation process has been relatively painless and thus far, I've had no real problems with any of these machines. So far, so good!