End Of Support for Windows NT 4.0

IdleMindUI writes "This month is the last month that hotfixes for Windows NT 4.0 will be released. Security fixes will only be released to Microsoft customers with Custom Support Agreements. Custom Support Agreements are still available for customers that need them and can be obtained by contacting a Microsoft rep. More information is available on the NT 4.0 support lifecycle site."

Comments

New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

We are still building new servers at work (a bank) to use NT4. By the time we are finished certifying Win2000 for internal use it will be 2007 at least. We still have a few dinosaurs running Solaris 2.1 (!!!) and no one wants to upgrade them because they run mission critical applications which don't allow for any downtime.

Re:Supporting?

[Combuchan]

Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?

I know Linux does. The 2.0 development cycle has seen work from July 1996 to February 2004. Since the source is open and I'm sure there's some 2.0 folks still around, any security fixes, as rare as they come up in the kernel, could easily be backported.

Companies EOLing stuff after 9 - 10 years scares me. With the notion of pervasive computing and kernels showing up in a wide range of things, the concept of software lasting far longer than we thought is now nothing new. Consider Y2K-affected machines--engineers never thought their products would still be running 30 years later, but somehow, they were.

You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage.

Just think, do you really know when you're going to be replacing that server you've just setup?