Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) will reportedly debut later this month. Tech news outlets are widely reporting that the much-anticipated update will be available on April 29. Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

The final version of Windows XP SP3 was slated for delivery during the first half of 2008, but Microsoft seems intent on downplaying the attention it might get in favor of pushing Windows Vista, especially in light of the uproar about extending the life of XP.

Tests by Devil Mountain Software show that Windows XP, coupled with Service Pack 3, runs some desktop computing tasks roughly twice as fast as Vista. Devil Mountain also discovered that SP3 offers a 10 percent performance boost over XP with SP2, while performance gains with SP1 for Vista were negligible.