Despite a month-long moratorium on new coding, Microsoft's XP Home Networking Team sent out alerts this week about a new beta program aimed at improving the Wireless home networking experience. In meetings with the company late last year, members of the team told me that the feedback they had gotten on XP's home networking components indicated that they had some work to do, and this beta program is the first visible result of that feedback. The invite-only beta program is set to begin in April and end quickly, probably by early May. One thing that's still unclear is how the results of this beta will be marketed. It's likely that Microsoft will release updated XP home networking components for free, but it's also possible that this work could see the light of day in a future refresh of XP that might ship later this year.
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