Judging from info posted on Microsoft's Windows Service Pack Road Map, the third season in the Windows XP SP series is due for release in Q3 2007, after the long-awaited launch of the company's new operating system, Windows Vista.

The announcement is official, and users that are still not lured by Vista's new features will be able to stick with their good old XP, making sure to patch it up in the right spots with the new Service Pack.

From a functionality point of view, Microsoft did not make any statements, but what's sure is that SP3 will fix a considerable amount of bugs and may even automatically upgrade Internet Explorer to 7.0, still in beta stages at the moment. Moreover, SP3 is likely to improve XP's integrated firewall software and make some changes to software patches published after the previous similar update, Service Pack 2.

SP3 will bring forth support for WPA2.0 and WiFi, as well as the .NET Framework 2.0 runtime. Media Player 11 could be also included, but that's just a rumor, at least for now, since Microsoft did not yet confirm or deny it.