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Windows 2000 - Nine Months to Live
HeUnique writes "According the this story at The Register, Microsoft is planning to retire Windows 2000 as far as OEMs concerned. MS has asked OEMs to stop immediately the shipment dual-boot systems running Win2k/WinXP, so your choice now is either to upgrade to XP or else." Only if you're ordering systems running Microsoft Windows, though.
Here where I work, we've still not completed the rollover from NT to 2000, and I have yet to see a single XP system installed, even in a development lab. Even in the UNIX world, we're just now getting rid of the last of our Solaris 2.6 (*perhaps* by the end of the calendar year...)
Does anyone else see massive fragmentation of Windows like this, just due to the extreme upgrade lag of production shops? If it is widely spread, what do people think this mean for Windows in the corporate world?
In addition, is this just a product being retired, or is this a move by Microsoft to start boostrapping Palladium?
Since M$ doesn't even have a replacement server product one can assume this is either false, or the reporter is talking about Windows 2000 Pro only (not Server) and failed to get his facts straight.
No way I'm going to run XP within my company. It's an OS that I don't trust, and haven't had the chance to learn well (and don't want to).
So either I'm going to buy a couple dozen licenses of win2k soon,
OR
I'm going to use the existing licenses and don't care at all about licensing (call it non-violent resistance, whatever)
OR
I'm going to start spreading linux on desktop OSes.
Plus, I don't want to upgrade to the Software Assurance thing, 'cause it's going to cost much more and it's not worthed (office 2000 is WAY better than office XP, and I don't want to upgrade - same for win2k/winXP) if you don't want to upgrade.
In any way, Microsoft will lose one of its customers. And I think I won't be the only one.
Anyone else taking care of a network of more than a couple dozen PCs does think like me?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
And never looked back. Even on my 'old' 366 MHz machine it runs beautifully. At work on my Pentium 3 Machine Windows 98 chugs along, and I must crash it 3 or 4 times a day.
:-)
But since I'm taking a day off I can enjoy Windows 2000
As a Microsoft developer I find this very disturbing. I think Windows 2000 is a very capable operating system for desktop use and small servers. My brief experiences with XP are that it is a little flakey(er?) than 2K, and all that WPA-invasion-of-privacy Gestapo crap makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach. I use both Win2K and Linux at home (primarily Win2K) but I can see the day where the devide between my "home" computing life and my "work" computing life (which is all M$) will become like night and day. What about Win2K server? .NET server hasn't even hit the shelves yet AFAIK (or if it has it is still VERY new and unproved). Time to learn Java.
I guess if people aren't compelled to upgrade based on XP's own merits, Microsoft will force them to. Too bad most end-users aren't aware XP doesn't hold a hell of a lot over 2k, nor of the restrictive licensing scheme, nor the We-KNOW-Where-You're-Going-Today activation process.
Microsoft sets a 5-year lifetime on all their OS products. Windows 98 is just about up now. Windows 2000 will therefore officially die (on paper) sometime in late 2004/early 2005. We all know Bill would like to sell us another hojillion copies of WinXP, but the truth is that the support contracts for Win2K are still valid for another couple of years. They can't just pull the plug like this, it opens them up to an easy class-action lawsuit. Although that wouldn't hurt their 40? billion bank account much, it would surely throw around an imperial storm cruiser-load of bad press and maybe finally take CNN's eyes off Pakistan.
This isn't like some little free util going from freeware to cripple-ware or some other triviality. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of corporate users with long-winded paperwork to cover their asses against Microsoft. It's much more profound than the usual "This software has no warranties whatsoever" EULA trite.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Really.
Our shop is about 30% into our Active Directory Migration, Windows 2000 server based with XP clients logging in. (Say what you will, XP's security isn't AS BIG a deal if you've got a properly designed -- and segmented -- network)
Migrating off Windows 2000 workstation should be something you're already doing - not keeping a proactive upgrade policy is just ASKING for trouble. (How is this any different from cycling your hardware out every three years for desktops and every two years for laptops? That's been a standard business practice for a very long time.)
In any event, the forced continual upgrade path for Microsoft products and OS's keeps me employed and keeps me learning new stuff. It also makes those residual Windows 9x boxes in our department look even more prime for replacement. Management has dictated that those machines stay in place for political reasons...Our being able to say 'look, _Microsoft_ hasn't supported 9X for X years' helps us move those boxes forward.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Where I work, we are still on NT4 and (thankfully) Office97 so there is no WPA in the system yet.
The thing is, even if I went to my supervisor (which I already have) about such issues, the highest brass don't want advice even from their more technically oriented underlings. They just don't care or know enough to realise that they are getting hosed.
Only in 5 years they will feel the noose tightening around their neck and by that point, it will be VERY hard to switch to other platforms, even though I expect that Linux will be very advanced by that time in comparison to today.
It used to be, when my [non-geek] friends asked me what kind of computer to buy, I told them to play around with Windows 95/98/2k and MacOS, and go with whatever they feel more comfortable with. (Yeah, I know this post will get modded down because I don't push *n?x, but they wouldn't be able to or want to use it.) If the only Microsoft option is Windows XP I'll just tell them to go buy and iMac or iBook. Microsoft isn't going to change its practices unless people STOP BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I can see this move by Microsoft backfiring in a big way. With a tighter economy, in particular less revenue coming into a company, the emphasis is on cost cutting, not increased expenditure. It's clear Microsoft has set the path for higher operating costs this will annoy people from the CFO's who are pulling back the reins and saying, whoa there boy to the techies who are content and in some cases still doubtful over Windows XP's performance and stability.
This could be a golden decision for Linux.
That said W2K Workstation and XP Pro are similar enough that just as a lot of folk see no advantage to upgrading, there is not a lot of downside to upgrading. If you want to have a homogenous IT shop in which everyone has exactly the same setup then you will be installing from a pre-mastered disk image anyway.
The slashdot blathering against XP from people who admit they have never used it is simple ignorance. The sae people can be found lambasting Microsoft for unreliable software and then proudly proclaiming that they never upgraded from Win95. Well Duuuuhhh!!!!
XP is a big improvement over w2k in a few areas. The big one being that you can run Win98 software on a system with an NT kernel. The nice to have feature is that my Vaio now reboots in 30 seconds instead of taking 4 minutes.
I think that the real reason that so many of the slashdot crowd are so anti-XP is that they are scared of it. It takes several releases for any O/S to become reliable. In the early days of Linux the main attraction was that it was more reliable than several of the commercial O/S. When Solaris 2 first came out it was a byword for flaky, people were running SunOs for reliability.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Seriously. Anyone still buying Microsoft today is doing so because they have to, because they're counting down the years until retirement and don't want to take a risk (nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft), or because they really are just too dumb to see that if they don't bail out before Palladium arrives, they'll never get out. I pity those people, but I don't expect any of them to suffer an attack of clue in the near future.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
According to the Microsoft MCSE FAQ, they are planning to retire the MCSE 2000 concurrently with the retirement of MSCE XP/.NET and not before.
This makes sense because they haven't even gotten some of their own study materials out for MCSA 2000 until recently, let alone MCSA/MCSE XP/.NET exams are still being introduced. God I hope so, I've just started investing into a MCSA cert (which I hope to have this month) that I plan to upgrade to a full MCSE within a month after that.
But you never know when a vendor moves to "push product." And that's the #1 motivation behind for-profit vendor certifications.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
mine it's more than "I don't like it and don't even want to try it". I had enough bad times trying to make all our win2k work together and I was lucky because I didn't have to tweak EVERY SINGLE installation of win2k I did. ...like regular win2k boxen. So why bother? win2k is more than enough.
.xls spreadsheet. Works perfectly in office2000. Doesn't work AT ALL in office XP. Office XP is not fully compatible with office 2000.
:)
I know that I can manage something by using active directory to tweak at a registry-level every machine that logs into the domain, BUT
- doing that requires a lot of time to plan, try, test and develop the tweaking
- after the tweaking, basically all the xp machines will
1. look
2. be more ore less
PLUS: office XP is REALLY bad. I mean, we have an application (SAP) that is CERTIFIED to give back some results as an
So why bother, again? I'm more than happy with win2k. I don't have time, resource AND enough interest to TRY to LEARN windows XP, not even for myself. I've had enough of that crap, and I realized that if I had spent that same much time that I've wasted on microsoft product on Linux instead, we all in our company would have linux desktops with openoffice working smoothly. And I wouldn't be writing those angry slashdot posts
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Someone said that Windows 2K and Windows XP are "Microsoft killers". They have finally come up with an operating system that works reasonably well. Sure, these latest Windows flavors have their problems, but nothing that would make one want to upgrade.
And that is the nub. In the past, people snapped the latest Windows version like they were hotcakes, in hopes that this would finally be the Windows version that would solve all their problems. This is Microsofts problem: not the fact that there is something in XP that people would want, but the fact that Win2K is already doing a fine job.
The only reason people will buy newer versions of Windows would be Microsoft forcing them to. Witness this move, and the recent "upgrade or pay triple for your licenses" extortion.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I don't trust XP because I'm not confident on what it's going to do, what is it doing, and HOW. Win2k is pretty settled down - with the microsoft's kb, websites, tweaks and some experience with microsoft operating systems you know more or less what's happening inside the machine. Plus, win2k has been around for enough time to let people develop some useful applications that runs on it.
Now, XP has a fairly new approach to the concept of "operating system"; users, even users who wants to, have little chances to understand what's happening. I'm not talking about those "errors" that can be fixed by XP itself - I'm talking about strange behaviors that let the system usable, sure, but MAY give complications later on.
IMHO, XP it's an OS that doesn't leave enough free space to the user to be considered "affordable" for business use.
Let me explain in another way: I have a quite big amount of machines and users under my Power. With such a quantity of machines, troubles are going to arise much more often than if I had only a couple of dUh-SERS. It's statistic: the more users you have, the more stupid problems that you almost never encountered before are going to arise.
Now, with XP the amount of time you have to spend to "hack" around and inside it to learn where the problem was and how to avoid it, well, it's just not affordable, given the amount of machines I have in my Kingdom. Unless I make my company hire other IT guys, either very well trained (and expensive) or I'd have to train them - and still waste part of my precious time, that I could use in better ways, say, reading their mail.
Using microsoft OS at work is not just like at home when you can click the 'ok' button and forget about what the problem was. in a business you NEED to know why the error did arise, and how to avoid it, and probably how not to make it happen again on another machine - unless you want to go and check each and every machine you have in your business and fix that thing before the CEO hits it. It's a matter of experience (ah! pun): if a window box is configured perfectly, it's not going to give you troubles at all. If you leave even some stupid thing back, well, sooner or later you'll have to spend a great bunch of time fixing it - and trying to understand where the problem is.
Dunno if I made myself clear about that, let me know. The topic here is much more a matter of "feelings": windows's behavior is not scientific, sometimes cannot be predicted.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Ok I've got karma to burn...
Bullshit... NT4.0 and Office 97 can carry any business today and for the next 5-10 years. You dont need office 2000 or XP to make money, or make more money, or any of the other lies MCSE's and Microsoft shovel's down everyone's throats.
Dont get me wrong, I HATE NT4.0, it is the bane of my existance (Although I still support a fleet of NT3.5 servers...I have to as the pripetary(SP) software/hardware WILL NOT RUN ON 4.0 or higher) and I do love all my 2000 desktops compared to the NT4 destops I used to have here.
Microsoft started Dying back in 1997.. they have yet to release anything that is needed by businesses cince then... and you can run a very sucessful business with all 1997 software/hardware without suffering from any ill effects if your sysadmins and netadmins + IT/IS staff are competent (read as NON MCSE's)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In an (modest) effort to counter MS's Palladium coup, I've started convincing those around me who won't switch to Linux to stick to Windows 2000. I'm actually having a rather easy time doing this (much easier than converting Windows users to Linux, unfortunately): most people who have Windows 2000 are happy with it and don't see much incentive to move on, especially if you replace their icons with WinXP-like clones (ah, the power of icons...). The motto seems to be: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" (something I must keep repeating myself every time I feel the urge to upgrade my Linux boxen).
I keep thinking this should be bigger though: we should all put MS in a tight spot and hail Win2k as their best offering so far...they can't say it sucks (after all it only came out, what, three years ago?), but at the same time their business plans hinge on the fact that people will naturally upgrade OS every two years or so. So we need to start a movement: I'd call it the Great Microsoft OS Freeze...basically, tell people to stick with their OS if it works (Win98 or Win2k) if they won't switch to Linux, *BSD or OS X...I think you'll find a lot of receptive ears...
Reminder: find a new sig
to get panicked MS sys-admins (who won't or can't upgrade to XP or linux) to stock up on some extra W2K licenses over the next couple quarters. This will boost MS's cash revenues to offset a suddenly more subtle use of "commonly accepted accounting practices" which make the earnings appear any way they want.