"Windows XP SP2 [Service Pack 2] is a release that's totally focused on security," Gates said. "And, in fact, today, this is the primary focus of the Windows team. We've got some portion of them still working on the major featured-oriented release that's off in the future, code-named 'Longhorn,' [that is] very exciting, but we prioritized the resources and the activities around what's an intermediate release under the name SP2 that is just security oriented." Microsoft will ship XP SP2 by midyear, I'm told, and will include three key features: a new, more powerful Windows Firewall; a more secure version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE); and the new Windows Security Center, which is a dashboard of sorts for security settings.
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