Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Extends Product Lifecycle
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has decided to extend product support on business and developer products effective June 1, 2004. Mainstream support remains unchanged at 5 years, extended support is greatly extended from 2 to 5 years and Online self-help support is extended from 8 to 10 years. I have to say kudos to Microsoft on this one."
Hear, hear!
I just about choked when I saw the word "company" and "98SE" in the same sentence, here in 2004.
I can see it happening on a couple of legacy systems spread around a company, but to have an entire company on it? Jesus - and I thought the company I worked for was behind!
disagree with the statement "kudos for Microsoft". What 11 out of the first 13 replies to the post do not seem to realize is that the post is talking about O/S support not a religion. Personally I find the MS developers site informative, simple and free. I wonder how many of the 11 have actually tried to use it (gasp, some of us still have customers who use NT4). Oh how I wish I hadn't squandered my mod points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe you're right. Y'know, I still haven't figured out why Microsoft has picked this fight with Linux. It's a war they can't possibly win. You can't compete with a hobby after all. And yes, before the zealots jump all over me, I know Linux is much more than a hobby these days. Still, that's what makes it virtually impossible to wipe out.
It would be a much more interesting computer world today if MS had gone with the same attitude as IBM. Just think of where we could be if MS was contributing to open source in a big way instead of wasting resources trying to dis-credit it at every turn.
I would guess that one result might be that their stock wouldn't be stuck at ~$25/share while Redhat's, (for example), has gone from $5/share up to $25 in the last several months. It seems shareholders and potential investors are biding their time and waiting to see how this all shakes out.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
Anyone else cynical enough to immediately think that this is just to stop people considering their options when they realise that their support's suddenly run out?
There's plenty of businesses out there running older versions of windows who might look elsewhere rather than upgrade if there was no support.
That said, better software support is probably generally a good thing.
Is this step really suprising?
No, because their very own bugs force them to obey the wishes off their customers: customers seem to use OS software longer that MS think they should, hence they tried to control the lifecycle by ceasing support. What is the consequence of this?
Millions of unpatched machines out there spreading viruses and spam all over the internet. And what should Microsoft's reaction to that inconvenient side effect of using MS products be: "Sorry, no more support!"?!? That should easily make for the biggest PR desaster in corporate history. They simple realised that and adjusted support to the longer lifetime that their OSes unfortunately have in the wild.