@Chris C
I've had SP3 RCs and 'buggy' versions one the machines I need to put on for a while now as I have been testing them and it's caused no problems thus far.
Although I'm still 'testing' as far as I'm concerned, I don't expect to find anything scary in there; it's effectivly just an accumulation of patches, and these are clean install machines, so it's about the safest environment for an SP3 install - AFAIK problems that have been found have been related to strange, rare tools and dodgy third party components. Not virgin installations on widespread, mass manufactured [Dell] hardware. I'm not so niave as to just blindly accept that all will be bliss however, of course - but then my machines are not 'production' yet so I'm prepared to take a step into the dark on this.
In any case Automagic Updates have caused me *far* more problems than redistributable service packs over the years - and I'd rather have machines that are secure than machines that are only patched up to a level from three years ago.
Simple as. Contrary to popular belief, I *do* have a vague, wishy washy, rough idea what I am doing ;-)
Steven "fucked if he is spending 200 hours updating 50PCs over a 2meg DSL lin" Raith
NB: I'm not running a domain, I don't have WSUS and I don't have the option of slipstreaming the current 'up to SP3 level' patches into an image [neither of which I am happy about but my hands are tied], so I hope you can see why SP3 is of use to me!