It's been pretty easy to download the release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3 for the last few days -- if you knew where to look. But if you're the sort of person that prefers to download operating system updates directly from the software maker's website (we call these people scaredy cats... or alternately, smart computer users), you'll probably want to download SP3 directly from Microsoft's servers.

Well, now you can do that. Microsoft has launched a public download page for Windows XP SP3 RC.

The installer is a 336MB file which includes all of the patches, security updates and bug fixes since the release of SP2. That means if you've been keeping your PC up to date, you probably won't actually need everything that's in this package, but since you can't officially install SP3 through Windows update yet, you'll have to download the whole thing anyway.

Keep in mind, this is a release candidate, not the final version of SP3. Microsoft may still issue updates before releasing the final version, so while we're pretty sure this package won't break your computer, we ain't making any promises.

[via Digital Inspiration]