Windows 2003 Going Gold

chill writes "According to CNet's News.com, 'Microsoft is expected to announce on Friday that Windows Server 2003 has completed testing and has been certified final, or gold, code.' With 35% of their server customers still using NT 4 -- the NT 4 that is so broke it can't be fixed -- Microsoft is hoping for quick adoption."

Comments

2003...in 2003?

[JTinMSP]

Too bad it'll be SP 1 or 2 in 2004 that'll leave it usable and somewhat secure. I actually prefer 2000. The XP interface and how it handles some things really left me cold.

It's an excellent strategy.

[MarvinMouse]

All Microsoft has to do to force people to purchase upgrades is include a fatal flaw in each of their released systems. Then, with their new found buy of a VM company, they can offer a new system (at a price) that is secure, but runs all the programs from the old system.

You are then left with a choice, stay with an unsecure system which will never be patched (unless independent sources patch the flaw,) or buy a new system at an inflated price, that will do exactly the same thing your old system did, but not have the fatal security flaw.

Really, it's quite an ingenious business plan, because they aren't forcing you to do anything, just making sure they get paid for all these patches they've been releasing for free.

I would not be surprised to start seeing them stop patching all their older OSes, and seeing their new OSes all include legacy VM support so you can run the old programs without the security bugs.

Then you are left to a choice, buy more software from Microsoft (so you can run securely), use OS software with respective VMs (and take the risk that all of your software won't work), or keep using your unsecure OS.

Unfortunately, for most businesses only one of those 3 options is viable.

Re:It's an excellent strategy.

[Psiren]

A rather cynical view if I may so, but not unsual for /.

or buy a new system at an inflated price, that will do exactly the same thing your old system did,

That's hardly true now is it? There are likely to be a lot of things in 2003 that people want to use that were not in ealier versions of the OS. I know for example that our Windows guy wants the ability to rename Domains, something that isn't present in any previous version, but will be in 2003. You can argue of course that some of these feature should have been in earlier versions, but thats another matter altogether.

For the record, I'm a Linux admin, and use Windows as little as possible. But FUD is still FUD, no matter which side of the debate it originates.

Re:It's an excellent strategy.

[davemabe]

Maybe Microsoft should release the source code to products that they no longer support so that users can fix the unfixable flaws.

Early Adapters

[Txiasaeia]

I'm sure that MS will have no problems with early adapters; they'll be coming out of the woodworks to pick up a copy of Windows 2003, I'm su...

Oh, wait, you mean *legal* copies? Nevermind.

NT4 upgrade path

[DrXym]

I wonder how much of that 35% is using NT for file and print services or a web server?

Instead of incurring the massive expense of replacing the equipment that currently runs NT 4 plus the licences of running Windows 2003, perhaps they should just move over to Linux. Maybe there is scope for an advertising campaign from Red Hat or others that says as much.

Better yet, perhaps someone should offer an NT 'migration kit' which attempts to replicate the NT services and settings in Linux.

Re:NT4 upgrade path

[Lumpy]

Or how about the fact that if your NT 4.0 servers are inside the corperate forewall LEAVE THEM RUNNING. sorry but Nt4.0 makes a good Fileserver/SQL platform on good hardware. W2K other than the changes in the domain model offer's nothing to 90% of the server users outther eexcept a way to make the companies wallet lighter. and W2k3 is no better. we are just now finalizing the change to W2K on the desktops, XP is still prohibited on the network and we are one of the largest companies in the USA..

granted after the last merger the IT dept is now full of Microsoft Cheerleaders, but cince upper management is in the "SPEND LESS" mode getting linux in the door is still very easy. IT says no, I simply get a member of uppers sales management to approve it and they override the silly IT police.

The key to working with corperate IT is to use the leverage of the upper management to keep the IT department in line and doing their job of maintaining and increasing services for the company and the employees while using innovative and low cost solutions...

If you can do a linux project that will cost very little, WORK and can be maintained, I dont care what IT policy says, the upper management will let you do it.

This is my little secret, and it works great if you learn Corperate-speak and always talk in money to sales management.... Example.. "Switching to linux for this task will save us $$$$ on the next 4 quarters cash flow, which will get us closer to meeting budget."

Good timing

[glh]

Wow, good timing! I just wonder how many network admins will get ticked off that MS didn't fix NT so they're going to try out something else for a change (ie, enter Linux). Most companies aren't willing to jump to a new server OS for mission critical applications, which is most likely WHY anyone would still have NT running. Very few people are comfortable running version 1.0 server software, which is essentially what this is.

I think it is a bit irresponsible for them to NOT support NT, and I just don't by the "too complex" architecture bit. Honestly, I think they don't want to fix it- it's time to move customers to the next version. They could come out with a really heavy service pack, but that probably doesn't make much business sense. It's likely they have a good grip on how many people are running NT still-- perhaps losing those customers are probably cheaper than doing another service pack? In addition, the only companies that REALLY need to be concerned are those that can't block the appropriate port with a firewall since that is a temporary fix.

Gold?

[Linux-based-robots]

I think Windows is going towards another element: Palladium

Hehehehehe

Re:Gold?

[deadsquid]

Going gold usually refers to the point at which the codebase is released to manufacturing for production. Everyone feels the product is ready (enoguh) for prime-time, and it's sent out to be mastered, reproduced, packaged, and readied for distribution to the retail/reseller channels.

Its the beginning of the end for MS

[TerryAtWork]

Now that Palladium is going to lock me into Windows, I'm switching to OpenBSD with some GUI on it.

And I've been a windows guy forever...

When even guys like me leave, that's it.

Mind you, this'll take some years yet...

let's consider age

[John_Renne]

I see a lot of sarcasm (not only here) on the subject of NT4 not being fixed. Let's not forget the OS was introduced in 96. I'm not sure about the rest of you but I'm not running a linux-distro that's 7 years old.

Re:let's consider age

[Christianfreak]

But MS promised its customers that it would support NT until either this summer or early next year (I think there was some confusion about that). Its not about age its about what MS says they are going to do. Its nothing new that MS breaks promises but it is amazing to me that so many companies and individuals blatently pander to them even after this kind of crap.

Re:let's consider age

[Lumpy]

Let's not forget the OS was introduced in 96. I'm not sure about the rest of you but I'm not running a linux-distro that's 7 years old.
nor do you have any responsibility of running software and hardware that generates 1.2 million dollars worth of income every day in my location alone. Nt4.0 is it, Hell many of the systems still run NT 3.51 but will be upgraded to NT 4.0 here within the next 12 months. If downtime can be measures in thousands of dollars a minute lost then you do not change your OS.

Sorry, but I know for a fact that for many more years that these critical systems that are making the money here will run Windows NT 4.0 and the vendor that these systems are from will still support them.

If you dont know about relying on the older OS's for mission critical tasks then you really are not in any Information technology fields.

only the foolish rush in and change things without a very strong reason.

A Security Enhancement?

[gnomeza]

From the article: Upcoming updates include: ...Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), a security enhancement;

For whom, exactly, would this be a "Security enhancement"?

this time its not the PRODUCT that can't be fixed:

[AtomicX]

this time, its not Windows which can't be fixed, its the license. Nobody is going to upgrade to WS 2003 unless they have to. WinNT 4.0 is slow and insecure, agreed, but it does the job and has been fairly extensively debugged (after 6 or so Service Packs). This is even more incentive for people to use Linux, the transition is cheaper, and although the cost per techie is higher, the TCO is arguably lower. When will MS ever realise that the product isn't the problem?

Brillant...and you found other crackpots to buy it

[somethingwicked]

Your argument is quite logical based on your assumption/accusation. But, really, that's where the problem lies:

All Microsoft has to do to force people to purchase upgrades is include a fatal flaw in each of their released systems

Fine, call them idiots everytime a new security issue is found. Instead, you are insinuating that they PURPOSELY include holes PREMEDITATED before the release of the product under the ASSUMPTION that it will not be found until AFTER they release the latest greatest product.

their new OSes all include legacy VM support so you can run the old programs without the security bugs.

From your POV, this is support for your twisted accusation. Actually, it is a very customer friendly action. You can use what you have for now instead of insisting that you have to use "Mission Critical App your Business Would Fail Without.LATEST VERSION designed ONLY for Latest Windows (TM)"

Not a big deal that you can try to make this lousy argument. What is sad is that you found people to mod your post "Insightful" and "Interesting" while my post will soon be modded "Flamebait" and "Troll" becuase it is unpopular not to see ultimate evil in every action by M$

Top 10 Reasons to get Windows 2003

[AtariAmarok]

10. If Bill Gates gets more money, he can afford a borg implant for his left eye, too.

9. Linux? Never heard of it.

8. It satisfies the overwhelming slashdot community demand for Palladium, secure
computing, and better enforcement of the DMCA.

7. SAVE OVER $300 ON V1AGRA (oops. my spam filter failed and one slipped into the list)

6. w3 3l33t d00dz must have 1t 2 run directx for Quakedoom 6.

5. IN SOVIET RUSSIA, 2003 WINDOWS YOU!

4. Hey, they've got a monopoly reputation to maintain. Why not help them?

3. Oh boy! Another EULA to ignore!

2. Microsoft says this one's going to be really really good! Why should
I not believe them?

1. It moves us ever closer to Windows 2078, in which all the security holes
will be fixed once and for all.

Man o Man

[Apreche]

Ok, while Microsoft can certaintly afford to support their old OSs like NT4, and they probably should considering a lot of people use them. It's hard to blame them for not doing so. I mean, it's like people have this obsession with uptime. It wont destroy your company if you turn all the servers off for maybe an hour while you upgrade to 2k or now 2k3, or linux even.

I see it like this.

company: My computer is insecure, patch it.

MS: Your using an OS from years and years ago. Get a new one.

company: no.

is the same as

company: My house is insecure, upgrade the locks on my doors.

locksmith: You're using locks from the victorian era. There is no way to "upgrade" that. You just have to get modern locks, you know, ones that work. We've learned a lot about locks since then, and the ones we make now are actually useful.

company: no.

While there are tons of issues like having to pay MS for licenses, etc. etc. But when it all comes down to it its a matter of a company that can't stand to have their system down for a little bit of time. Sure, there are indeed some mission critical things that shouldn't go down, but its not like people will die. And if someone breaks in you'll lose a lot more than that little downtime would cost you. The only computers that can never go down are in a hospital, and even then only if they are keeping people alive. And those shouldn't be running Windows.

Upgrading

[Desult]

The simple fact is that upgrading from NT4 is waaaaaaaay too hazardous to try. This seems like a joke, but it's not. My workplace upgraded from NT4 Terminal Server and some version of Citrix to Win2K and a newer version of Citrix, and it took us weeks and a ton of downtime to come even close to finished, because of conflicts with applications that had worked fine under NT4 TS, but now were crashing/running into permission blocks/etc under the new config. Not to mention the issues we had with upgrading profiles, and everything else. This is literally why our webserver is still NT4 SP6a, and our SQL server is MS SQL 7 on NT4. We're too afraid of the possible downtime associated with the upgrades of these absolutely critical boxes. True, the security risks could be just as bad, but when in doubt, my boss wants the status quo. My boss would love to go to a Unix, because it's free... but we've dumped an insane amount of money into licenses. So that's also impossible at this point. Good strangehold MS has, now that I think about it. =) -Greg

I can't imagine...

[tarsi210]

I can't imagine that this will take off very fast. Here's my thinking on this one:

• If you are a normal user, you could give a crap. No upgrade.
• If you are a developer, you might upgrade if you can afford it/justify it/take the time to stress it out. But I can't see much development moving to 2003 anytime soon, other than just testing on it.
• Most companies are in a bind, they've just figured out how to work 2K or XP upgades into their budgets/plans. 2003 is NOT going to be appealing for awhile.
• If they've already upgraded to 2K, they're not going anywhere. 2K's been solid for me, and it seems like the rest of the world generally agrees. (YMMV) At least we know of a lot of the problems with 2K and (if you've kept up with it) the patches are applied. No surprises. 2003? It's like opening a present from your grandmother. You have no idea what's inside, but you're pretty sure you're not going to like it.
• If you are using NT, you are either a) an NT zealot/whore and you wouldn't switch if God himself upgraded, b)you have so many scars from NT that you now feel obligated to your tormentor *crack!* Yes, Mistress!, or c) you are on NT for a reason...you have a 56 day uptime, the box sits in the corner under the donut rack, and has survived 3 major floods. You can't justify getting rid of it.

So. Microsoft releases yet another product to mediocre reviews and sluggish market response. Next.

Re:Bitching about NT4 not being patched...

[Jens]

Think Linus would care if there were a flaw found in 1.3.75? DOUBTFUL.

Actually, there's a maintainer for every (stable) version of the kernel. 1.3.x is not stable. But 2.2, 2.0, 1.2, 1.0, including even the 0.0x series, have a maintainer. And those maintainers do fix bugs if they are found. Embedded systems and special machines still use 1.2 or 2.0 nowadays. Recently a couple bugs was even fixed in v0.01.

Yeah, most of them do it for the kicks, or because they/their businesses need it. Your point was?

Re:Server doesn't use XP interface

[GlassUser]

Windows 2003 Server doesn't support the XP interface at all. It looks like 2000 and you cannot make it look like Windows XP. A lot of the "eye candy" is left out; it has no place in a server GUI.
That is incorrect. The Themes service is disabled by default on 2003 Server. I do this on my workstations too (I prefer the standard skin - or lack thereof, and wish to recover the resources it uses). You can (or could, when I tested it) enable the service and apply themes. This is useful in terminal server environments.

Re:Server doesn't use XP interface

[override11]

Well, command line has its uses, for sure. I mean, you wouldnt want to put a GUI on a cisco router, but a GUI has a way of organizing information to present to you all at once. In a lot of cases, I can grasp a concept of how something works, or better work on a configuration on a service, with a GUI. Take a checkpoint firewall for instance. Checkpoint has TONS of options for setting up objects, encryption domains, etc. Having a GUI lets me see groups of options that are inter-related, where a command line leave's me wondering.