A service pack (in short SP) is a collection of updates, fixes, or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Companies often release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain (arbitrary) limit. Installing a service pack is easier and less error-prone than installing many individual patches, even more so when updating multiple computers over a network.
Service packs are usually numbered, and thus shortly referred to as SP1, SP2, SP3 etc. They may also bring, besides bug fixes, entirely new features, as is the case of SP2 of Windows XP.
Read more about Service Pack: Incremental and Cumulative SPs, Impact On Installation of Additional Software Components
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or pack:
“I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks
Are at my service like enforced smiles,
And both are ready in their offices
At any time to grace my stratagems.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A man was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore.... Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)