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Microsoft's Most Successful Failure

Posted by Zonk on from the win-some-lose-some dept.

m4dm4n writes "As we near the end of mainstream support of Win2k The Register looks back at what it has achieved. What was meant to be Microsoft's most secure OS ever turned into a disaster. Worm after worm changed the face of internet security in Win2k's first 2 years. Five years down the line the battle is far from won, but the improvements are dramatic." From the article: "Things were different in the year 2000. Programmers felt vindicated that the Y2K bug didn't turn out to be that big of a deal. We made it past January 1st, and then it was time to move on. Windows 2000 came out that first quarter, just as security was becoming more interesting to more people -- and Windows was a good place to start. It was also seemed to be the start of a new breed of Windows hackers."

5 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. say what you want... by msh104 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    but atleast it didn't took me 4 years to get my printer up and running... all in all I am very happy with linux, but why does it always have to be win=bad lin=good everywhere.

  2. Failure -- A bit harsh? by Blahbooboo3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I won't make an arguement about security problems in Win2k, since the article is correct. However, I will say that I think Windows 2000 is the best MS OS to yet come out. The GUI is far better then XP (IMHO), has support for all the latest "bells and whistles", and it is FASTER than the equivalent XP machine.

  3. Re:Pardon me, but weren't most of the worm issues by OhPlz · · Score: 5, Informative

    IIS and the repeatedly exploited index server were distributed with Win2000. The RPC port exploit was also a Win2000 issue.

    I think it's a shame that they're twilighting the support for the OS. I still use it and have no real reason to upgrade to XP. I tend to wonder if the only "big deal" with XP is that it included a software firewall.

  4. Win2k, a failure? by JeffTL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can't see how you can honestly call Windows 2000 a failure -- Microsoft didn't spend more making it than they made off of it, and it was actually (in my experience, at least) more reliable than XP.

  5. It was successfull, kind of... by adolfojp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was the first STABLE windows platform that could handle multimedia apps.

    Security became a joke, but stability was superb.

    It was a gigantic leap from the 9x series.

    Cheers,

    Adolfo