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Final Windows 2000 Update

Posted by Zonk on from the putting-her-out-to-pasture dept.

Ant writes "An article on eWeek discusses Microsofts plans to ship a Windows 2000 Update Rollup, the final security patch for the 5-year-old operating system. The Update Rollup, which replaces Windows 2000 SP5 (Service Pack 5), is a cumulative set of hot fixes, security patches and critical updates packaged together for easy deployment. The Update Rollup will contain all security-related updates produced for Windows 2000 between the time SP4 was released and the date the update ships. It will also feature a small number of important, non-security updates. The Update Rollup comes just one month before mainstream support for Windows 2000 client and server releases expires on June 30."

17 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. No IE7! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    No IE7. What will this mean? For a start, web masters everywhere will be forced to support IE6's crappy CSS for ages. They even refuse to port back the rendering fixes to MSHTML.dll. Look on the IEBlog. Bruce Morgan, arrogant slimeball that he is, first censors a perfectly valid comment just because he admitted that Win2K has hundreds of buffer overflows and integer overflows that were fixed in XP SP2. (And doesn't answer why they aren't patching the overflows). He then goes on to say:
    "browser feature set of IE6, browser platform of IE6, rendering engine of IE7" seems like it appeals to no one. You wouldn't get end user adoption because that's not driven by HTML rendering abilities. You wouldn't get much corporate adoption because such a hybrid would risk breaking existing apps for (again) little end user goodness.
    Note how he doesn't mention webdevs once. What happened to ballmer and 'Developers developers developers developers'? And he makes it sound like home users actually have a choice! If MS wanted to make the internet a better place then they are morally bound to do this. Prats like Morgan mean that they won't. Yes, people can download Firefox but not everyone will - there will be enough people using IE6 on 2K to be painful to webmasters everywhere.

    Why not go over there and tell them how you feel? This is the post in question, this is the direct link to leave a comment which they've deliberately made subtle.

    1. Re:No IE7! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For a start, web masters everywhere will be forced to support IE6's crappy CSS for ages.

      The only webmasters who might be incline to support IE6 forever would be business application developers for the intranet. Otherwise, webmasters should design web pages with open standards in mind. When users start having a lousy web experience because they are running an older browser, they will either upgrade the operating system and/or switch browsers. Then again, there's always a small minority of users who will blame the webmaster instead of the browser for their lousy web experience. Go figure.

    2. Re:No IE7! by binary+paladin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think you overestimate Win2k's usage. Not only that, but the kinds of people who use Win2k. Remember that while XP is based off the NT setup it was also the first to be marketed toward home users.

      Yes, Win2k is NT and yes it supports DirectX but it was never marketed toward home users. The people using Win2k are professionals, nerds, techies, server admins, etc. These are the same kinds of people that keep their software up to date and are at least a little bit security conscious. The kind of people who still cling on to 2k aren't part of the senseless mob that generally uses IE in the first place.

      You're right, not EVERYONE will download Firefox. Not EVERYONE has stopped using older versions of IE (still a good sized handful of people using 5 out there). Not EVERYONE has stopped using fucking Netscape 4.x either.

      What changes is that when IE 7 comes out, there is an expectation that things won't work in IE 6 anymore and that expectation wasn't there before. Honestly, the worst thing this will do is force some 2k users to switch to something besides IE.

      The only real downside is that webdevs like me who use Win2k for IE testing are going to have to get XP now too. Teh suck. Gotta make sure it works in IE 7 too. Bleh.

    3. Re:No IE7! by MMMDI · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then again, there's always a small minority of users who will blame the webmaster instead of the browser for their lousy web experience.

      Amen. My newest project (shameless plug) is still small in terms of popularity, but I receive numerous "why does this look weird / not work in IE" messages regardless. Trying to explain to people that the site is standards compliant and that IE doesn't properly support standards is somewhere in the range of explaining the laws of physics in terms of how much people grasp the concept.

      According to the stats for this month, 14.7% of viewers are still using Windows 2000 or lower. That number was 16.2% last month, but I'm sure the small drop is thanks to only four days worth of data being in the system for this month. Combine this with 75.3% of viewers using IE (0.5% using IE 3.0!), and I can only imagine the feedback I'll be receiving when the site grows in popularity.

      Disclaimer: the site is standards compliant unless you check out a review where one of us has used an & symbol in the review text. MySQL character encoding, been busy, need to fix it, blah blah blah.

  2. It's a shame... by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This was easily the best operating system MS ever made; easy-to-use, stable, and could run any app written for Windows/WinNT/16-bit Windows.

    They should have supported it longer.

    --

    Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
    1. Re:It's a shame... by shanen · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Ah, but they did not make DOS 1. They bought it from some local guy.

      Having said that, I, too, regard W2K as the best OS Microsoft has produced to date. However, they have a marketing cycle that, in the absence of real competition, requires that they produce a couple of years of garbage so that at some point they'll produce a good one they can really market. W95 was like that, and W2K. I'm doubtful that Longhorn is the real one, actually. I think they're still retrenching and they won't actually need another good product until around 2009. Then again, maybe Longhorn will be delayed that long...

      I still think Word XP is still a deeply offensive product compared to Word 2000...

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  3. W2K by orangeguru · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is that the final nail? I am still working with W2K - and I see no reason to upgrade.

  4. eWeek may be spreading FUD by capboy118 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=patchmanagement&m= 111773947308242&w=2 Eric from Shavlik, produced many counterpoints to this article by eWeek. It is not the final update for Windows 2000 - security updates will be released for it long after this roll-up.

  5. This could be good for Linux though... by Heem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alot of companies still have Win 2000 servers. Heck I'd say most windows shops still have a majority of their servers on windows 2000. Heck, many even still have NT4.

    Then here comes Microsoft saying, "OK, you're done. Either upgrade your machine (and give us money) or you are going to be vulnerable to a slew of attacks that we won't patch"

    Well, so they have to upgrade anyway, we need to get the message out about Linux, and how support for linux will not "expire" like this.

    And this on the heals of Novell's big announcment today...

    --
    Don't Tread on Me
  6. And this is why it had to die by team99parody · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's the biggest thread to Longhorn sales in existance.

    With Win2K's death I don't think Microsoft has much to worry about regarding Longhorn being not successful anymore. XP & 2003 are pains to use as a server.

  7. Wrong, wrong, wrong by R.Mo_Robert · · Score: 4, Informative

    Windows 2000 does move into Extended Support on June 30, but that doesn't mean they suddenly stop supplying security patches as this summary seems to claim (though, yes, it will probably be the last "Serivce Pack"-ish upgrade.)

    The primary difference between mainstream and extended support is that "Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the Extended support phase." Security updates will continue to be provided until 2010, the "end of life" for Windows 2000.

    --
    R.Mo
  8. it worked for me by brickballs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    our school gave us craptops with win 98 to use for school work. as long as we did our work and stayed out of trouble, they didnt really care what we did with the laptops.

    we immediately started tweaking with them trying to improve the preformance and stability.
    removing all the novell software was a great boost to the preformance.
    upgrading to windoes xp expontntialy increased the stability, but with only 128mb ram, the preformance on xp left something to be desired.

    then one of my pals tried windows 2000. it was perfect. stable, but not a ram whore.

    redhat also ran prety good, but one of our classes required that we had M$ visual basic, so dual booting was the only choice to run *nix

    --
    "What does slashdotting mean?"
    "You've never heard of slashdot?"
    "I know it makes websites not work."
  9. Re:What if Detroit did this? by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which explains why generic replacement parts are illegal, right?

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  10. Any reason to upgrade yet? by fsck! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My organization has about 80 Windows 2000 Professional desktops and no plans on upgrading yet. We are very good about getting all the updates as soon as they come out, but still see no reason to switch. I am honestly not trolling here, but what incentives besides "MS won't fix any further bugs" do we have? Is there anything that you found being worth the switch? We have roaming profiles and, up till now, very homogenious installs. The other side of the coin is how well XP behaves in Samba3 NT4-like domain. If it's any flakier than 2K, forget about it.

    1. Re:Any reason to upgrade yet? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Informative
      I am honestly not trolling here, but what incentives besides "MS won't fix any further bugs" do we have?

      If W2000 works for you, nothing. Extended support (security hotfixes) for W2000 doesn't end until March 2010.

  11. The final security patch for win2k? Hardly. by luminate · · Score: 3, Informative

    This article is just flat out wrong.

    From the article:

    "Microsoft Corp. plans to announce as early as next week that it is ready to ship a Windows 2000 Update Rollup, the final security patch for the 5-year-old operating system."

    The final security patch? Microsoft will provide security-related patches for Windows 2000 until 2010. Heck, even eWeek's own site basically says that here.

    Am I missing something?

  12. The Article and Posting are Wrong by Nintendork · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Tech support for 2000 will have to be paid for, but security patches will be released at LEAST until 2010-06-30. Between mainstream support ending and extended support ending, the only missing things are:

    1) Non-security hotfix support unless you buy an extended contract for this.
    2) No-charge incident support
    3) Warranty Claims
    4) Design changes and feature requests

    Here's a link to the dates on their site. Click ont he link towards the top of that page for the FAQ where they explain what all this means.

    They released security updates for NT4 well beyond when its extended support phase ended and I imagine they'll do the same for 2000. Even if they don't, I'm of the opinion that this is a very agreeable support lifecycle.

    -Lucas