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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."

4 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 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.

  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!
  3. 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.