BleepingComputer.com: Windows XP Home with SP3

I've searched on line for a definitive answer to the question: Should I upgrade my XP SP2 to XP Service Pack 3? But I could not find a consistent answer. Recently, Romeo says to update, but there are many who say NO and many that say it depends on your machine, how you use it, what anti-virus you use, etc.

I have an older machine on which my XP Home SP2 crashed; I reloaded an older version of XP with SP2 (with much help from BleepingComputer), but because it was not a recent version, there are many updates that were not included. My machine has only 512 RAM (but I will increase this), a Pentium 4 processor at 2.66 GHz. I use Norton System Works and Anti-virus 2009 (Although it frustrates me, always running background stuff that sends my CPU to 100%.) I run no games, and almost no music or videos. I run programs such as WordPerfect, MS Word and Excel, Paradox, a Compaq Fortran compiler, TurboCad, QuickBooks, etc.

MS is prompting me to upload SP3, but I am receiving mixed messages from friends, blogs, forums, etc.

What should I do? Upload SP3 or somehow upload many (which ones?) of the updates that I don't have on my computer?

Thanks.

Romeo already gave you the logical answer.

Louis