BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft will release a new Service Pack
on September 24 including the various security patches. Because Service
Packs are also available as CD distributions (for a shipping charge),
this may help customers without high-speed Internet connections
obtain all the patches (over 30 Megabytes) needed for their system.
Unfortunately, many brand-new PC's include old versions of the Windows
Operating system and are immediately infected when connected to the
Internet before they can download all the patches.
This would be a welcome change from Microsoft's previous public statments
that the Windows Update Service is the only way for retail consumers to
obtain the patches.