Hot on the heels of the Windows Vista SP1 release candidate is the release candidate of Windows XP SP3.

SP3 does not offer much in terms of new functionality and is more of a combined roll-up of earlier patches and updates. It goes without saying that this is what enterprise folks are looking forward to.

According to Microsoft, the final version of Windows XP SP3 will be released in the first half of 2008. It will be the final major upgrade of the Windows XP operating system.

You can download the release candidate over at Microsoft’s Download Center. As usual, install with caution, because this is hardly the final release version.