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Half Of Businesses Still Use Windows 2000
bonch writes "An AssetMetrix study shows that half of business are still running Windows 2000 four years after the release of Windows XP, and that usage of Windows 2000 has only decreased by 4% since 2003. Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 2000 by the end of this month, offering one last update rollup later this year. Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform, and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year."
when Longhorn is released late next year
Yeak, okay...
Yeah, right.
More
I have not run into a compelling reason to upgrade from Win2k to XP. Win2k has been very stable for me. It seems that my XP boxes get more security patches than my Win2k boxes. I don't need all the eye candy of XP.
"and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year" ...if it is released next year. It seems to keep getting pushed back.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform
I don't think the "popularity" of Windows 2000 is a factor. I think its more of businesses have a hard time justifying that hit for another $199 to Microsoft for an updated version when the version they've already paid for meets their needs.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Maybe this is because Windows 2000 already does the job and they don't want to spend time and money on change for change's sake ?
They're WAITING for Longhorn to arrive. With all the fanfare Microsoft's been drumming up about it, not to mention their huge marketing budget for the product, Longhorn is going to be hard to ignore.
...But then again, I know of some businesses who still use Windows NT 4...
Certainly in the mass market. Why upgrade if you're not getting any significant benefit and possibly causing yourself huge amounts of grief?
Deleted
Althrough it's safe to assume a lot of these companies WILL upgrade within a few months, i don't think you can blaim them.
Windows XP doesn't offer much (if any) valuable new stuff for use on the corporate desktop.
win2k is plenty good enough for people who need that kind of thing. there is certainly no reason to move to 2003, unless forced by ms using pricing. which just illustrates the trap of closed source systems. i run win2k systems and freebsd systems, i certainly will not be planning to move to anything past win2k, i am just biding my time till i can move those systems to freebsd.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
We still have 98 running on several systems..
As long as it runs their copy of Office and all programs they're running are also compatible with 2000 still, I don't see the incentive to spend thousands on a upgrade that is probably seen as highly unnecessary at this time, not to mention they're probably running them on boxes that would be slowed down by XP. The lack of support coming at the end of the month may have some incentive to move to a new version, but I still doubt many will see it as a great need to move on.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
For those that don't use it for games (yeah, I know, but my dad actually does use his PC for work only), XP really doesn't have a lot of reasons to inspire an upgrade from 2K. It still runs a reasonably modern version of Office, seems fairly secure, and is actually more reliable than any of the XP boxes on their or my networks. Myself, I'm an avid Flight Simmer, so XP Pro it is for me -- but for business machines, I'd still say 2K is the way to go. I used to work in a call center, and we almost never had any problems with our 20 or so 2K boxes. Updates rolled on their own -- no real admin duties worse than keeping the fileservers backed up.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
The simple fact of the matter is that upgrading from Windows 2k to Windows XP, doesn't offer much, a server running Windows 2003 Server, can still operate the same without switching the clients to Windows XP. Windows 2000 also takes uses less hardware requirements, and if it runs all their programs with ease, why would they risk switching to a new OS with problems? Then there is the fact of security Windows 2k has been around about 5 years, its going to have less exploits then a system like XP which can have more potential security flaws, then ones that been around longer.
yes, it's true, my mom also.
Most buisnesses have already bought Windows 2000, the cost of maintiaing it is equivalent to the cost of maintaining windows xp, so why would buisnesses upgrade to windows XP at an extra cost? We use Windows 2000 at our office and we dont think that upgrading to windows XP will increase our productivity.
The initial model of growth probably was that as buisnesses purchase and add NEW hardware, they will obivously prefer latest software. Now that PC penertration has into businesses has almost saturated, this model will no longer mean profitable buisness for microsoft.
http://www.rajeshgoli.com
at least MS can be glad they're not running Linux instead.
Why doesn't MS try a subscription based scheme? A small amount for installation of the OS, and then a renewal fee each year? For some business it would be profitable, and MS would have less of a need to keep rolling out software to replace what works.
and the world still turns...
What happens when Longhorn comes out? It'll be five years old in a year, even though it's still the most up-to-date desktop OS that Microsoft offers (discounting Media Center Edition, 64-bit, etc.) I'm contemplating trying to convince my company to move to XP (from Windows 98) and support is one of the key selling points... so what happens when Longhorn comes out? You have a few months, and then you lose support if you're running anything less on a desktop?
Win2K does it very nicely for me, and it whizzes along happily doing what I tell it when I tell it and the only time it has crashed is when I tried a little overclocking. All the latest games happily run on it, all the newest apps would be stupid not to support it so I'll be happily telling Win2K what I tell it when I tell it for at least another 5 years maybe longer... one happy user here
Resident of Skara Brae since 1985
Why bother switching from 2K to XP? A fresh install of 2K only eats up about 5-600 megs of HDD space, where XP uses up to 1.6 gigs. XP is just 2K with too many bells and whistles that hardly anybody uses, not to mention many more holes and lots of graphical nonsense/bloat. XP has the system restore feature, which in itself rarely works properly. 2K doesn't need it. Why fix something that's not even broken?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm the only IT guy, and my company uses a windows2000 server with active directory and such on a Dell. Runs fine.
I don't really have anything to add.
*cough*
- my userid is lower than yours
There are two main reason I have seen for not upgrading:
1. There isn't very much difference between XP and 2000. 2000 is a fairly stable platform that runs pretty much all the same software as XP. "If it ain't broke"
2. The activation stuff sucks. Even as a legal owner I find it is a huge pain in the ass. This is especially true when you upgrade a server. It's not uncommon to upgrade servers either by changing/adding hardware or just replacing the whole machine which can cause you to have to reactivate Windows. Now, it's not that hard to reactivate but it's just a stupid little thing you have to do and the machine won't work until it's done. It feels risky to upgrade machines running XP because you're not sure if everything will go smoothly because of the activation crap.
I use 2000 on my main development machine because sometimes I do have to change the hardware for testing purposes and I got tired of having to continuously reactivate Windows.
I don't know what I'm going to do if they stop supporting 2000. More reason to spend more time in Linux or OS X I guess (although technically I simply must spend some time in Windows for development purposes).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
If Microsoft didn't release upgrades ("innovate"), people would complain that Microsoft stagnates. (Hey, they already do that!) It's funny that many of those same complainers also have yet to upgrade to the latest version.
:)
So, basically, Microsoft can't win here. No matter what they do, people will complain. Forced upgrade or forced stagnation.
Good thing I use Linux and my upgrades are free.
My computer at work still has NT4. I guess we're too cheap to upgrade. All the new computers deployed have Windows 2000.
On a related note, I have Windows 2000 at home cause I'm too cheap to upgrade to WinXP. I also see no real reason to upgrade to XP. I guess I can understand why businesses don't, either.
M$ have decided that it is in the 'best interests' of their clients to upgrade and will shortly discontinue support for Win2K. Luckily, those of us using open source operating systems need never fear such chicanery.
Aparently there aren't enough existing bugs in Win 2k to justify an upgrade to XP. Compared to the NT/Win 95 days, when the next edition was as much a giant patch as an upgrade. Perhaps Microsoft will insert a few more errors in Longhorn to keep the process moving along.
If Microsoft is really interested in getting businesses to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Longhorn, then all they need to do is a couple of things. One make the upgrade procedure from 2K to Longhorn as smooth and painless as possible and two provide the upgrade at a very good price, like the cost of media or shipping or some other nominal fee. Seriously! If progress is being held up (or support is costing too much) then Microsoft needs to offer a deal that cannot be refused. It cost more to get new customers than to keep old ones. Besides, Office is where the real money is anyway, so keep em hooked by keeping them on Windows by making it a no brainer.
This is a lot of work for Microsoft programmers and designers to pull off and a lot of expense. But most of this work needs to be done anyway and in the long term it can only pay off for the company and for its customers. Longhorn is going to take a while to get here, so they might as well make it worth the effort.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Last Tuesday i was in town and i passed two engineers from the FirstGroup of FirstBus in Aberdeeen which is a huge bus and travel company in the UK. The two of them had a Dell laptop with a USB cable running out the back and uo to a roof of a bus stop which had an electric radio that communicated with buses that displayed the ETA of the next few buses, and what type of bus it is. Well, me being me went to check what operating system they were using. I thought they might use linux for this soft of thing, but they were running a version of windows 2000 professional, and the thing kept crashing, and the guys were obviously pissed. Anyway, my bus came on time.
I think the big problem is with the old adage, "If its not broke, don't fix it." In Microsoft's case, I guess its really, "If it's less broke, don't fix it." The problem is that people understand Microsoft's constant problems so they stick with something that works for them until they have a compelling reason to switch, such as better security, a loss of support, or huge new features. I think this presents a problem though because it encourages Microsoft to add a bunch of "features" even if they aren't needed. This could really lead to them losing a core focus on what they're trying to produce. Just my $0.02.
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Here is a list of the new features in XP. Notice the use of words like "Enhanced, Improved, Greater, Easier" -
.NET Platform
For the life of me, I can't figure out why anybody would consider moving thousands of workstations to XP. The only thing I can come up with is the built in firewall which can be controlled via group policy.
User interface improvements? Big deal, so now it looks like nintendo. Better help? Users call the help desk. 64 bit? Big deal...
-Intelligent User Interface
-Comprehensive Digital Media Support
-Greater Application and Device Compatibility
-Enhanced File and Print Services
-Improved Networking and Communications
-Integrated Help and Support Services
-Improved Mobile Computing
-Reliability Improvements
-Stronger Security Protections
-Easier Manageability
-64-Bit Support
-Looking Forward: The Microsoft
Use their EU bargaining tactics and release a SP for Windows 2000 that officially renames it to "Windows Antiquated Edition."
On our network of fifty users, we are staying with Windows 98 Second Edition for the near future; Win98 doesn't suffer from most of the worm and trojan activity that affects Win2000 and WinXP. Also, for our purposes, Win98SE Just Works.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
It has to be released then according to MS: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default .mspx
Check out the table. Notice how the licencing end dates run out at the end of this year for OEMs and next year for system builders? Longhorn has to fill that spot or the contracts need to be renegotiated.
And the other 50 % use NT 4.0
Win2K "just works". It's rock-solid & runs well on the machines large businesses typically run. (Pentium 3 level)
At idle my win2k box is running 11 processes and uses about 80MB of Ram. By simply removing all the services you dont require (running a clean box) you can get better performance than XP can hope too achieve. Most vendors installations of XP have so many gadgets and whizzbangs running in the background that they will suck up 200-300MB of ram and a large percentage of processor time before they are even running an application. I dont know whats worse, Windows ME or windows XP. 2K also doesn't try to download/install crap without me knowing about it (at least I hope so).
How much of the other half still runs win95/98/me ? It just depends when they bought their comuters and how long they last, not how long MS thinks its software should last.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Really? is there really any other option. As far as servers go, Win2k is pretty much where it's at right now. For desktops, Win2k is what people had been waiting for since windows 95 came out, I think a lot of people switched because of this. There is no compelling reason to upgrade to XP. It offered a few eye-candy features, and changes to the UI (think control panel and search) that confuse even the most competent windows users. Not to mention the whole problem associated with activation. I don't see why anybody with 2K would want XP.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
W2K -> linux
In Texas only old people use Windows.
This is remarkable only because of the tacit assumption that businesses should be in the continuous process of updating.
Computers are appliances. Like cars, refrigerators, and furnaces, computers don't change their function (at least in a typical business application) throughout their lifetime so why should they be replaced or updated if they ain't broke?
XP offers the same essential platform as Win2K. Would I replace my car to get new chrome? As a consumer I might, but as a business owner, I don't think so.
WinXP is nothing but a big pain in the ass. I just got a new workstation with XP on it, and it is terrible. It does not play nice with our existing windows network, it offers nothing spectacular over 2K. I truly believe that they know all this at MS, but they must generate revenue. Shut up and consume should be their mantra, not where do you want to go today.
Half of businesses are using 2000 and 2000 will not be supported. I'm guessing that most of these businesses are small/medium size and have very limited IT budgets.
I'm guessing that piracy will spike with small businesses in the next year.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
Upgrades are based on need vs. cost, generally speaking.
... but there is no reason to make changes every time a new version (even major version) of a software package upgrades, it's just common sense.
...
If the need for new features from 2000 to XP (or productivity increases it would bring, even if there are no needs specifically)... exceeds the cost, it is a beneficial upgrade, and it will probably get done.
There are probably still some companies out there running NT, just because it works, and there is no benefit to shelling out thousands to hundreds of thousands (depending on the number of seats)... just to have a "newer name" software with some extra features that don't matter (for the company, not don't matter in general)
Seems like common sense to me, anyway...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
I can recall similar tales of various versions of NT back in the day suffering from slow adoption. Aside from what has been previously stated in this thread about just what XP offers to business users as opposed to 2000 (almost nothing), let's keep mitigating factors in mind.
.NET being scrapped as native to the OS, there are less headaches than one could initially surmise. I will stress, however, that the pattern of not being able to get something to work right and trashing it demonstrates a development problem which, if not rectified by now or soon, could result in an extremely poor product coming out of Redmond. They need to be at the top of their game, as their enemies come from all fronts with attractive offerings of their own these days...
The enterprise costs of XP in support are greater than 2000 in a number of cases. Many companies bought into 2000 in the very beginning, and got hardware that worked at that time. Resources are a problem for many of the machines built OEM for Win2k. Additionally, compatibility issues with other software and hardware solutions arise. Speaking from personal experience, our company committed to a software phone system which, as it turned out when we tried to upgrade to XP, just STOPPED WORKING. This is really bad for a CALL CENTER. Compatibility issues such as these mar XP's widespread corporate adoption.
I will go so far as to predict Longhorn will have the same adoption problem if Redmond continues current patterns. With WinFS and
The Crimson Dragon
Longhorn can come out next year, Debian was released ;)
IIRC, in 2004 Steve Jobs considered OS X a success because 50% of the install base uses OS X. Even now something like 13% of people are still using OS X 10.0-10.1...
Monstar L
Nothing has really happend this Win2k, except from people ...
complaining about their color vision when logging off xp
Microsoft need to layoff people and start to get off the idea
of introducing a new os every year,and start extending their OS support.
Windows 2003 is the logical upgrade to Windows 2000, not Windows XP.
Old Macs hang around, too. If staff are getting their work done on the old junk they're using, management is loathe is spend money on a replacement.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I do software builds for one of our legacy products on an NT4 box. It's a painful experience.
There is definitely a need to move from NT4 to 2000 - the differences are sizeable - similar to those seen between NT3.5 and 4 - from 2000 to XP, however - there is little reason to move, from a business perspective. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've moved most of our servers to 2003, due to better NLB support, but those that don't need to move, don't.
I realize this is merely echoing what's already been stated but... there *is* no truly compelling reason for most to switch from Windows 2000 to XP or 2003.
Here where I work, we're about half and half Win2000 and WinXP. Windows 2000 works great for the workstations and servers it's deployed on, and there's simply no reason whatsoever to upgrade to XP "just because". I love XP Pro, don't get me wrong. Wouldn't trade it on my personal home system for anything. But I also have no gripe with using 2000.
However... when Longhorn comes out the likelihood is that we'll faze out the 2000 boxes and replace with Longhorn. That way after a short transition period we'll only be dealing with XP and Longhorn. Which is fine.
The only thing in 2000 that really bugs me is drivers. Otherwise, I have no gripe with it and it still works great in the situations we've deployed it in. So there's no need to switch.
The real question is -- why are some people and places still actively using Window 98 (which is still deployed in more places than you'd like to know)?...
Do you know how many businesses use 98 still? A LOT. Many businesses are still using 95 and 98 on their old computers because they can't afford new computers. Businesses are not going to change as quickly as Microsoft wants them to. NEWS FLASH!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
I currently work for a webhosting company in which we have about 2/3 of our servers running windows 2000, with the other 1/3 on Linux. In our office it's about 40% with 2000, 50% with XP, and 10% on Linux. I guess it all comes down to the fact that 2000 just works, so we didn't see all that much need to upgrade. A month ago we setup our first 2003 server in the office, to say the least, the tech department (including myself) are the only ones who appreciated the effects of the upgrade. Other users could care less.
Personally, I do like the improvements made both in XP and 2003. But in our case, it would be very difficult trying to explain to our clients why the server will be down if we decide to upgrade all of them, which I guess is something that will need to happen soon anyway.
We would all much rather see improvements made to the 2000 platform, such as storing the IIS metabase in XML format as is being done in 2003, then having to upgrade the whole OS. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be an option.
WinXP is laid out all screwy too, makes it really hard to configure or use. I don't think it's any more stable either. Also, the "eye candy" you refer to is absolutely garish - it's like they got a retarded monkey to try to imitate Mac OSX. First thing I did on my work computer (which is XP unfortunately) was switch the style to classic to save my eyes and some of my sanity.
For me, I use Win2k at work since it's the most recent "official" version of a Microsoft OS that the gov't approves for use on their networks.
I know people have already mentioned it here but I have to reiterate for thos people who are talking out their ass on deployment costs.
My emplyer is rolling out WinXP (+ Office XP) to 16000+ desktops. The post-migration issues are horrendous as we're jumping from WinNT and Office 97.
Keep in mind that when you upgrade - the license costs aren't too high compared...it's the re-training and migration of old sopftware that will kick your ass. We have countless Access 97 based DBs that are needing migrating, and I imaging every MS based shop out there will find the same deal. You fill in your niches gradually, but when you're forced to migrate you must pull up all those carefully ingrown roots and replant them elsewhere. Planning for that is never fun, and if your current software is doing the job (Win2k) then why shouldn't you stretch that out for as long as you can utilize only 50-80% of the product's usable features?
Granted a migration to Win2k would have been nice, but that's moot. Either way I'd say to all those Win2k shops out there to stay put for now.
if ms ever gets to the point where they put the guns to peoples heads and say windows 2000 is gone and you can't use is (via technology, licensing, non-available options, etc), i think there will be a lot of people (especially med/large business), that will have to balance xp/longhorn on one side versus linux on the other side.
the other place where ms has this problem is vb6/vs6. ms wants to move developers from a (largely) ms only developement platform to something bigger/better. so now the developers have to lookat vs.net and can also look at alternatives.
eric
When windows 2000 server was released, it was a tangible benefit for SME's to have Active Directory. I dont see a major benefit like this going from 2000 server to 2003 server.
The lack of an option for MS Remote Desktop is a big reason to look at a move to XP.. but other than that, I can't see a whole lot of other compelling reasons. The organizations I deal with are not planning a move from 2000 in the near future.
..don't panic
Why it is so big surprise for enterprises when companies stick with things which just work [tm]? For example, I'm linux advocat, but if company is very happy with it's Windows 2000 installation (and believe me, there are many shops with good windows admins), i would say - stick with that.
It is actually always have been a problem - IT industry wants customers to move on, but customers want the opposite - stick with things wich works and don't mess with that. Yeah, there always are improvements which can be made to get IT infrastructure work for you more efficiently, but there are usually small ones, not big architecture changes.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
No kidding! It's pretty funny that after years of making less than impressive operating systems, what is now hurting MS is that they made a good one and now people aren't upgrading. If something works, why change it?
I don't think this is unique to Windows, though. How many shops are still on older versions of Solaris, Red Hat, or Suse? Heck, even Steve Jobs can't understand why people on OS X 10.2 and previous have not upgraded yet. Unless you *have* to have the latest and greatest -- or are running some sort of R&D operation -- most businesses are simply going to stick with what works.
i think they have much less time than that. if the don't get a new business model, it may take 10 years for it come crashing down, but they probably have 2-3 years before they have problems that a very hard to correct.
there is a possibility that longhorn is their last chance to change their model. i've wondered if that hasn't contributed to the delays.
eric
Yet again, we learn that millions of windows user are "happy" with 98/me/2000 and don't see a need to spend money to upgrade. /. can insitute a "topic covered" filter, so you can screen your /. account to not show something that has been discussed n times in the last x days.
How many times do we have to go over this ? Maybe
I am writing this on a 2001 laptop running 2000 SP4, and see no reason to upgrade untill the hardware breaks beyond repair.
What MS needs to do is host a "conference" for "education" of corp IT guys, who IMHO seem to be morons; spread enuf FUD and a dictate will come down from HQ, swithc to XP; never mind that the idiot executives have help, and no idea of hte cost and effort and damage,...but that is another old story
The company I work for uses Windows 2k on all client machines. We have an IT dept. which supports the machines - that is, installs applications and updates and occasionally ghosts the machines.
When it comes to security, the network is of course behind a firewall and every machine has an antivirus program.
I can't really see what the impact would be if Microsoft didn't support the OS anymore?
Tons of small companies out there don't upgrade even if their current system if totally useless.
The last company I worked at had an ancient NT server as their main login/data backup/inet router (the horrors!) and every monday (sometimes even friday) morning whoever got to work first got the pleasure of rebooting it since it would consistently crash after about a week's uptime.
The "management" thought it was completely acceptable, though they were less pleased when I discovered that the automatic backup had stopped working months ago due to a broken jaz drive.
I really don't feel like rambling on about Win2k when I really don't need to. All you need to say about Win2k is this:
It works.
I can keep the school kids out of the system, keep the system running all day, and at the end of the school year, still have a computer that's about 99% as clean as when I started using it (plus everybody knows how to use it). Even though it's five years old, it still works. And as a sysadmin, anything that really works is worth keeping.
In my experience I have always been stepping over two versions of Windows on
corporate desktops. DOS and Win 3.11 (and Netware
Windows 2000 at a University I worked at. The plan there was to stay with
2000 (since they had been running it since beta 2 in 1998 as a rapid deployment
program), an when XP came out it was.. totally irrelevant.
I think they may have migrated a few servers to 2003 by now but for performance
reasons more than anything else (2000 had some pretty annoying server-related
bugs in DFS and so on, and the new SQL Server, Exchange etc. run better on it).
Longhorn might be the upgrade that's worth upgrading to. What's really quite
so different between 2000 and XP apart from the pretty GUI? All the Windows
2000 drivers for everything are still being produced. All the features on the
client desktop are identical. Okay so remote desktop is not 32bit colour and
not palette mapped... really do secretaries and research postgraduates notice
these things?
Longhorn will introduce software and hardware support that will make moving
seem worth the millions of dollars it would take again, significantly more
so than a forced migration to XP from 2000, and for similar kinds of gains in
functionality as from Windows 3.11 to Windows 2000.
XP does not give any increase in productivity and therefore there is no need to upgrade. Also at the rate Microsoft releases new operating systems the workload on the integration teams increase. Rolling out a new operating system requires a lot of testing on all the hardware found in the corporation. Because of this, it really has to be important to actually roll out a new version of Windows.
At where I work, not all the NT servers have yet been converted to Windows 2000. Very few Windows 2003 servers exist here at all. Why is this news?
In my University in Spain (in the Computer Engineering School) all our systems (maybe more than 500) are Pentiums 200 that run windows 2000 quite decently for what we use them (word, matlab, derive, and some others). Ive had experiences with XP installed in a pentium 3 that crawled so I don't think the lab admins are thinking of changing to XP, at least not if the university doesn't provide newer hardware as it has done with other Schools and Faculties, that run WINDOWS 98!!!! in 2Ghz pentiums.
...Windows XP support "officially ends" before Longhorn is released?
With the eye-candy disabled, XP is just a more up-to-date Win2K - just as stable/unstable really.
The interesting thing is - what % of businesses are XP? Even if MS get some of the Win2K people to go to XP - how are they going to get the XP people to go to Longhorn? It isn't going to happen extensively!!! MS are actually possibly more screwed (at least in terms of getting people to Longhorn) if they get Win2K people to go to XP at this stage.
And it's still long time to wait for direct Win2K -> Longhorn upgrades (2 years? More? -including evaluation/install time for businesses).
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Your system is down for a minimum of several days, and possibly weeks as all the apps have to be reinstalled/upgraded/reconfigured. It may not work at all.
If the system is WORKING then only a fool would bugger about with it. I have no intention of upgrading any of my WIn2K servers until such time as they are down for other reasons. And even then, only if I am sure that all the third party apps are guaranteed to work - most of our mission critical stuff is ONLY certified for WIn2k server edition. Mission-critical means if its down, we stop earning money. So down is not very good news.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
As far as I know to date there have been two versions of Windows that have basically been OK. Win2K and Windows NT 3.5.1. I can't imagine why anyone would want to move from Win2K (which works) to XP (which doesn't mostly). Also (which MS tends to forget) lots of software written for Windows (particularly stuff which businesses developed in house or using small suppliers) tends to be very specifically tied to a particular version of Windows. (Example I'm currently re-writing an application that only runs on NT4. Not 2K, not XP, just NT4. Its used by the company I work in on roughly 4200 machines in roughly 350 different buildings and is central to the business. Porting it is not a trivial undertaking particularly since we don't have the source code). This is the irony of Microsoft's repeated attacks on Java. They went after it because the spotted that it removed vendor level lock in which they saw (probably quite rightly) as a threat to their Windows franchise. But now that same lock in is actually at least as much as a threat to the same cash cow.
Like the link says, only "Mainstream" support will end. You can still get support on a per-incident basis (which isn't really that much different then before.)
Additionally, Microsoft will continue to release security fixes for Windows 2000 for several more years - they still release patches for Windows 98 now.
It won't change much for most people.
At my company, we've got several hundred servers running Windows 2000 still. IIS6 in IIS5 compatibility mode isn't perfect, and IIS6 in native mode breaks a lot of apps. And there's a ton of other little gotchas with Windows Server 2003 - Can't run Exchange 2000 on it, can't run a lot of 3rd party software, etc etc. It's not an extremely hard upgrade but like any other major upgrade it's a lot of preparation.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I work for a large international company and we're still using Win95. We see no reason to change. Many of our PCs are used for basic Office apps and Unix terminal emulation. We're not connected to the Internet so we see no reason to spend thousends of pounds replacing the 486s running Win95. At ~£1000 per base unit and over 4,000 units it's £4,000,000 we just don't need to spend.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
And the bugfix of a bugfix, Windows '98 Second Edition, is most strongly recommended.
I can definitely see why companies still want to use Win2k over XP. Windows 2000 is simply better suited for corporate use. It does not have any particularly distracting eye candy (think color blue) and just seems to have the best useful-to-crap features ratio of all the MS operating systems. I remember when our network was windows-based, I had the servers running 2k, and we just got a couple of P4 machines (when they first came out) preinstalled with XP home. It was a hell of a time getting those things fully working with the rest of the network. We ended up having to downgrade those machines (fun with xp-only drivers there!) because Home edition just wouldn't do what we wanted.. this is say that those copies of Home were just money wasted. XP just has a bunch of useless stuff built into it that has no place in a corporate environment. Win2k is really the least of the many evils.
Now I have the servers running Linux and even still, XP machines have problems playing nice with the samba shares. Win2k works fine, however. Go figure.
I like Windows XP. However, I just don't understand why they did some of the things that they did with it.
1. MSN Messenger auto running. Sure in a corp environment you can just have it disabled but it's annoying for small businesses that just don't have the IT resources to do it.
2. OS popups. Notifications above the tray that bring you the most inane messages ever. Try plugging in a USB2 device into a system that only has USB1.1 and follow the popup's instructions. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? I'm sure this is from MS's "usability" group that brought us Clippy and Search Mutt.
3. Window pane focus changes. This one I just don't understand. In 2k, if I open Windows Explorer in folder view, I can use the scroll wheel to scroll the pane that the mouse is over. In XP, I have to click the pane first to scroll. This probably doesn't affect many people but for those that it does, it is super annoying.
Since 2k still works for most people, I can see why XP would have such a problem replacing it.
IMHO this is a symptom of Microsoft taking something that ought to be plumbing or commodity, and turning it into a high-value, highly-visible product. The O.S. ought to be like plumbing and electrical wiring in your house, it just works. It's even more basic than the appliances, because you just assume that there's line current there when you plug in the toaster, or what have you. You just assume there are pipes behind that faucet and toilet. Furthermore, in the electrical case, you just assume there's a circuit breaker, GFI in the case of kitchen, bathroom, or outdoor.
Following the house analogy a little further, Microsoft has turned the house into, "Here's the house + basic plumbing fixtures + basic appliances." Actually, that's not too far from the way a house is bought, EXCEPT...
1: They've defined the whole package. When you buy a new house, you usually get to spec out fixtures and basic appliances.
2: They want you to re-purchase the whole thing every 3 years. Usually I only re-purchase as things wear out, and repair as needed.
3: They tend to bundle more appliances in with new releases. I'd never expect the toaster, food processor, and TV to be part of my "house" purchase.
Now compare the house model to Gentoo Linux. Gentoo has releases, but for the most part you can ignore them. At the lowest maintenance level, you just run "glsa-check" and keep up with security fixes. Higher maintenance levels are available if you want to stay closer to the bleeding edge, but at no point are you forced or expected to chuck it all and reinstall the OS. Some updates can be painful, like the new baselayout last week on my server. (The desktops took it just fine.) But it was still better than a reinstall.
OTOH, to be able to turn PVC piping and Romex into something people will line up for at midnight to buy is an interesting marketing feat, in itself.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Mainstream support for W2K ends, not support. All this means is that there will be no more functionality changes or enhancements. Security patchas, phone support, and debug escalations are all still in place, exactly as they are today. Stop the madness.
First of all, Microsoft tried a subscription scheme back in 2001 and no one switched, mostly because it was more expensive than the current pricing schedules (Microsoft got greedy and was trying to lock in their ridiculously high profit margins to the end of time). Plus, to make a subscription model make sense, businesses would have had to update on Microsoft's schedule. That idea will never fly with a business.
It is a very expensive and time consuming process to update the system for businesses because they have to test and probably update lots of other programs as well as the system. Some of the programs you don't find in the consumer market and there is no guarantee that the vendor has an updated version that works with the latest system. If the business is using programs in that category, then they have to either wait on the vendor to create an update or they have to switch to another program. Switching programs can create even more problems. All in all, upgrading the system when there is no real reason to do so just isn't done. Forget Windows 2000, I know of businesses still running DOS for some of their programs simply because the function the program provides still works just fine.
Bottom line, the goal of the last few Windows upgrades has been more to generate hardware sales for PC vendors and cash flow for Microsoft than it has been to introduce real innovation and savvy businesses recognise that. Longhorn doesn't look to be any more than an enhanced DRM platform that will require faster hardware at this point and that is not likely to make it a compelling upgrade for the average business (nor for an informed consumer). Microsoft is stuck in a rut, in the sense that it looks like Longhorn will be "more of the same" from Microsoft, and that just won't cut it anymore.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform, and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year.
On the contrary, XP's slow adoption might mean that business *are* planning to move to Longhorn, and don't see any reason for a short-lived move to XP given that it, unlike Longhorn(?), offers few benefits over W2K.
Come on, Windows 2000 is solid and designed to let you get work done. XP is constantly getting in your way. It's the revenge of MS Bob. Enough said.
Forget the 9x series. 98 can still get worms. Use Windows 2000 - though I hear M$ may end support! ;)
For most companies using Windows 2000, I don't see much of a reason to shift. The main reason for this is that their staff know how to use the machines, most of the stuff that was broken has been patched, and they simply don't need most of the newer features.
As a Linux guy at home, yeah, I get frustrated in a Win2K environment at work. If we had more 'cutting-edge' people who were happy with upgrades, we'd probably still stick with Win2K for most of our users, switching to Linux for our servers and people who are comfortable on Linux.
As a web guy, my only complaint with Win2K is that it won't support IE7. While I evangelise about Firefox and Opera, the reality is that most users here use IE6, and without an upgrade to XP SP2 or Longhorn, they won't get IE7. Now, granted, I haven't seen what Microsoft might do wrong with IE7, but given all the feedback they've gotten, it'll have to beat IE6.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
Windows 2000 is pretty much the same thing as XP, only with less animations and less "pretty" icons. It's stable, cost-effective, and compatible with all our hardware. What could possibly justify my expense for Windows XP when everything works right as it is?
To top it off, smaller companies who aren't quite large enough to qualify for discounts, are stuck having to pay the insanely inflated prices for Windows XP, and at one license per system/seat, that's waaaay too expensive!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
and thats just because XP-pro was free from work's site license. I still do my windowish stuff in 2k.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
"Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%;
Windows NT popularity was reduced from 13.5% to about 10%; and
Windows XP became the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs."
I don't think ME was ever popularly deployed in businesses. I shudder to think about it. Win2k was available then.
Win2k gave Windows users the thing they most wanted from an upgrade: it's the first one that didn't crash left and right. What's XP got to recommend it? the lollipop color scheme? Only the negative benefit that MS isn't about to stop support for it (yet). Meanwhile people are tired of having things moved out of familiar places to no visible benefit.
XP is truly an improvement over 2000 mainly in small ways that only a sysadmin could love, and nobody listens to us anymore. They should have left the colors alone and called it Windows 2000 Second Edition.
...Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform,...
It's not popularity that keeps us on Win2K, it's the ginourmous expenses of purchasing hundreds of XP upgrades; the support staff time of installing it; getting our applications working on XP; getting all our networking and printing going; and re-training/support the end-user's with XP "is different" issues.
Popularity is not a factor in IT decisions here, if it where the boss would have us on Linux, but alas our mission app won't run on Linux.
I assume that other companies also don't have as an IT decision point "popularity". It's the drain bamage of converting (it's not an upgrade) to XP from Win2k.
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
On top of this, MS is suffering from the aftereffects of its own campaign to get companies to upgrade every time a new version came out. There are still quite a few businesses and government agencies who are stinging from the horrible botch that was ME.
I know there are certainly still county and state government offices around where I live still using ME simply because nobody will budget OS upgrades.
The workers are NOT pleased.
There are lots of reasons for not upgrading. Here is an interesting one I heard about:
At a large General Electric office building, it was determined that they could not upgrade PCs because that AC wiring in the walls of the old building couldn't handle the power requirements of new PCs. Their only reasonable solution was to transition to terminal computing using the existing machines, or with lower-power thin clients.
... Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform ...
Try something like not wanting to pay again for a new OS that you don't need since Win2k, while not perfect, is good enough.
It's hard to justify upgrading your stable W2K server to XP if a successor product is just around the corner. Longhorn has been "just around the corner" for years.
It's common practice for software vendors to preannounce product in order to keep customers from looking elsewhere. But sometimes the tactic can backfire.
Does the development of a Win2K clone called ReactOS have any bearing on this discussion? (And is ReactOS genuinely a Win2K clone? I can't find links on their website to pin this part down.)
A GPL clone of the software that Microsoft no longer supports would allow internal fixing of broken things -- as long as the clone correctly runs the software in use.
The proper term is "learning disabled simian".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
According to the original report, the sample only covers windows-based PCs. Therefore the headline really means that over half of the PCs which run Windows are running the Windows 2000 variant.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
However, if they one day will need more money, this is definitely an opportunity for them to exploit with more aggressive marketing to make people upgrade more often. Or perhaps even for MS to come up with better products. However, there is no need to do that yet. From an economic perspective.
Push for legislation requiring software vendors such as Microsoft release the source code of software that they no longer support.
While they'll bitch and moan, you'll have tons of programmers on the side who'd be chomping at the bit to supply support for legacy systems/OSes.
Hell, I imagine that for the most part, you have the potential to rebuild a good deal of the computer industry, just by fixing holes in old MS products, etc, that MS in turn would save a fortune in no longer having to support.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
In my company we're still using win98 and office 97, with a linux box as domain controller, and everything runs fine and dandy.
Only one pc runs winxp, and that's because it was purchased recently and even the lowest-specs computer i could by runs it smoothly.
Other than that, if it ain't broke...
The first thing I did with my new installation of XP Pro was convert the desktop to "Classic". The default desktop, teletubby, is TOO "helpful", like a petulant child always trying to 'help' but really just getting in the way and being a nuisance.
However, since I spend 99.9% of my time in Linux (SimplyMEPIS) the XP desktop isn't much of a bother.
Later this year, when my need for XP is history, XP will become history.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
arf!
This is great for NAM/EUR firms, but does anyone have metrics for Emerging Markets, including Latin America and SE Asia?
Any data, anecdotal or otherwise would be most helpful.
I just bought a new laptop and I thought it was so corny. I have a wireless network, network cables, RoadRunner cable internet, but I have to plug into a phone line to activate? What happens when I switch to cell phones - or lose my telephone cables? I guess I pull out my copy of Win2k, that's what.
Make that not knowing their customers' customers.
While it may be fine for a Microsoft customer (Don't laugh. So its like a Mafia customer. They make them an offer...) like Dell to sell all the machines with XP pre-installed we (a Dell customer to the tune of several 10K units per year) just strip that puppy off the machine and install a plain vanilla Win2k from a CD because its absolute murder on the software when something changes.
If the OS changes and breaks something in our software, its a lot tougher and more expensive for us to fix (when its even possible. We probably won't be able to rehire the same team and most of the, uh, interesting documentation was done by osmosis.)
Microsoft's XP can sit on the shelf 'till the Longhorn cows come home.
Win2K is curently fine. We wouldn't even have gotten off NT4.0 if they hadn't 'end-of-life'd it. It did what was required and stayed out of the way.
If that hurts Microsoft's pocket book, maybe they should get into the toy business.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
We have a few 2k3 servers in place, but can't find any compelling reason to make a full switch. We could, but we have older hardware that couldn't handle XP very well, although we could nLite those workstations. I also use 2k at home. I do like the way Exchange 2k3's web mail looks, but that certainly isn't going to make me switch.
SYS 64738
Most large companies I work with wait for their next hardware refresh cycle to change OS. It's just easier than trying to in-place upgrade hundreds or thousands of machines. Since most companies are on 3 to 5 year cycles, it's no surprise that XP adoption is lagging behind. I'm sure ANY client OS is going to face this "problem" in a corporate environment.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
boakes.org
and they were released only one year apart. So why would anyone expect a huge adoption rate on the part of businesses that are on 2000? It stands to reason that a business that moved to Windows 2000 wouldn't move to an OS just one year newer that is essentially a UI update. Generally, the businesses that moved to XP were previously on NT4 (and/or Win98).
This article is a waste of time and the only reason it appeared on slashdot was to provide for more Microsoft bashing.
BTW, if slashdot wants to be taken seriously, the people that run this place should consider getting rid of the derrogatory icon used for Windows topics (same goes for the Bill Gates borg icon).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Apart for some tighly controlled access machines, we'd much rather keep our data and our system to ourselves.
A CD burner means that we can 'lose' 650+ MB of data at a time. On a machine without a floppy so we can't infect ourselves.
I don't think so.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Windows 2000 is one of their best platforms. It performs ok, and is more stable than anything they have previously put out. The only reason they would stop support for it is so that they can FORCE people to make unnecessary upgrades, and get more money.
The fact that usage has only dropped by 4% shows that their customers still want to use it. I would think they would do a better job of doing what their clients want.
This seems like a bad move.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
...do have a low TCO! You don't have to keep upgrading them if it works for you.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform,
Actually, it probably more illustrates the fear and loathing companies have of the cost, downtime, and productivity losses involved in any Windows upgrade.
I'm the entire IT Dept for a trucking company. Sometimes trucks get old and start breaking down and need replacing. When the mechanics tell the owner that a truck is breaking down too often and needs to be replaced, the owner can see it and goes and replaces the truck. Sometimes he buys a new one, sometimes he buys a used one. It depends on what the business needs are.
Microsoft is trying to tell us that all of our trucks need replacing simply because they have been in existance for a certain number of years. They still run fine, they don't break down too terribly often, and they do what needs to be done so the business can operate. You cannot in any fantasy realm justify replacing all the vehicles in your fleet just because they are a certain age.
My whole network is Win2000 and it works just fine. If MS wants me to upgrade a server and 25 workstations just because it says so then they can kiss my ass and I can start looking to change over to linux. That is business. It's not a personal decision, it's not some anti-MS vendetta, it's business. I will not spend money in a business that does not need to be spent.
Of course, if you look at the AssetMatrix site, they say Unfortunately, my quick glance didn't turn up the full report from the study (I found their news release, which said to go to their website, which linked to the news release) , the data used, or the definition of 'market share' as used in the news release.
But to answer your question, from the news release:Of course, we have no idea what those numbers mean, so it's fairly useless, other than to know that they've chosen a system that makes the numbers go down with time for Win95/98.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
2. Periodically change your CPU architecture, forcing all your loyal users to buy new hardware (and software)
3. Profit!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Hi!
Though not well known, the MS action pack is perfekt for small companies. Contains virtual any server -W2K3, Exchange, SQL... - and 10 copies of all office products and XP. And it goes for a 360EUR a year(in germany). No hooks whatsoever (apart from not beein allowed to resell it).
This statistic is a good thing, both for MS and for the Linux community. It means that soon, there will be large swaths of companies running an OS that is not officially supported. Unless their IT department likes to live dangerously, they have to migrate to a supported OS. In all likelyhood, this will mean a huge surge in XP SP2 adoption. But it could also be an opportunity for the Linux community to provide a viable alternative.
The timing is kind of screwed up for LH... As much as it has been delayed, it has a ton of interesting stuff under the hood, particularly when it comes to security. But I don't think any company will hold off an upgrade for a year.
... considering that Win2K was Microsoft's first, and last, decent operating system.
Here's a good one - IIS in Windows XP Pro only lets you run 1 web site - on Windows 2000 you can have as many as you like! As a web site developer, I'm not upgrading as I'll actually end up with less functionality! - Chris
To understand why, open the System properties box and look at the version numbers of 2000 and XP. They are 5.0 and 5.1 respectively. These operating systems are very close in funtionality and maturity.
XP does some digital signing and encrypting of secure data, boots faster and has a few GUI bells and whistles (which, apart from very nice anti-aliased screen text, is mostly just a memory hog). I guess they also created brand new icons, but sadly they didn't update all of them to the new theme. Perhaps they should have recruited some of the icon developers at kde-look.org, who for $0 can make a better and more complete icon set in their sleep than the 6-figure MS devlopers could in the couple years between 2000 and XP.
Point is, there is very little compelling reason to upgrade, especially if you have a lot of systems to manage. The original IE 6 can't be upgraded, but it can easily be replaced by Firefox. The only major worry is a future lack of security updates, but that's years off.
More people would have upgraded to XP if MS had built a new command line shell, made the GUI work faster even when it is in Luna-mode, and made some other real improvements. These are scheduled for Longhorn ... wait a minute, I just received word that they are all cancelled. Perhaps Longhorn will be version 5.2?
This also means that Microsoft has too high of price for its software products. The new features are not worth the price of upgrading. Rather than negotiating with software pirates, Microsoft should consider halving its software prices across the entire software/OS line to assure its dominance. Another option would be for Microsoft to stick with what it does best... user interfaces... and port the Windows experience to a FreeBSD or OpenBSD core.
The reasons businesses do not want to move is because of the "Microsoft Tax". Why pay millions of dollars to Microsoft in upgrade fees when you can get a brand new computer / asset and get the OEM version for a cheaper price than upgrading the OS on a slower computer. You will find that companies asset lifecycle is roughly five years. Longhorn will certainly be on the list for companies upgrading but it will more than likely happen on PCs they leased and got an upgrade on. Remember that businesses run on money and if you can keep the expense down for five years, you get a bigger bottom line.
From TFS:
I think it has more to do with Microsoft's difficulty in showing his new platforms as more secure than its predecessors.
My other post is a First.
I haven't tried Diplomacy via e-mail before but it sounds interesting... have you got a group going (etc etc)?
I sing the doggie electric!
Though not well known, the MS action pack is perfekt for small companies. Contains virtual any server -W2K3, Exchange, SQL... - and 10 copies of all office products and XP. And it goes for a 360EUR a year(in germany). No hooks whatsoever (apart from not beein allowed to resell it).
Neat. More details here. IIRC, last time I looked at that the software was for sales and marketing demonstration only, but it allows covers internal use too. You need to register your company with their partner program, but that's no big deal - you don't need to qualify as a certified partner to get it anymore.
The second reason is this station has been burned with upgrades before. Legacy programs wouldn't work. Now that we have had Windows 2000 long enough to get everything to work, we hesitate to upgrade to XP. It is the whole "why replace it if it works" mentality. Even when I got my new cheap celeron computer, they IS dept took of XP Pro and put Windows 2000 on it to avoid network compatibility problems.
A third reason is Windows 2000 isn't the resource hog at XP is. Even on my new celeron computer with just onboard graphics, Windows 2000 runs really fast. At work, you really don't need eye candy. We are still running some computers that could not handle XP.
That pretty much sums it up.
I've been working in the corporate/business/enterprise realm for a couple years now, extensively involved in the upgrade and deployment of software and enterprise solutions, and it's been my experience that the reason companies remain bogged in older versions of Windows, has very little to do with the popularity of the current and/or newer version.
The reasons I've found for companies not moving on are usually: lack of company support for the upgrade, inability to do an overhall ATM, lack of funding, lack of knowledge regarding the benifits of upgrading, low company desire to move to a new version (because the current version is satisfactory), version must be approved by testing (big reason), and lastly, because of zombie anti-Microsoft hype which scares upper management needlessly.
The lack of upgrades appears to be mostly unrelated to the actual new version itself, but more the state of the corporate/business world, and society's own misgivings.
I have a laptop which is spec'd from around 1999 - it runs Win2k perfectly. It gets daily use when I'm not sitting at my uber VMWare Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD box. I have had the opportunity to put XP on that laptop for years now. Never wanted to.
But since there is a rollup (read: folks, after this you're on your own for defending yourselves from all the exploits found in our shit software) it'll be only a matter of time before unsupported Win2k becomes a flashing billboard for 'let me join your botnet please'. I'm gonna go for Zeta. Fuck XP! My laptop once ran BeOS when I bought it new and I'm looking forward to going back. I hope Zeta has adequate wireless support - although I have worked it out on BeOS 5 with BONE. For that 'lappy' (with only a 466MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, S3 Virge) there is no way in hell XP could utilise those resources half as well as a BeOS-family system.
I've already ordered my copy of Zeta. I can't fucking wait for this homecoming of sorts. As you can guess I'm over the fucking moon about the Be revival!
The Be is back folks!
...mine is still running NT4.0, for christs sake!
You can use ActionPack in produciton, but the program is designed for people who sell or build Microsoft solutions. Don't know how much they actually check this tho.
HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHA slashdot taken seriously HHAHAHAHAHAHA omg what planet are you from AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA
Is their company willing to:
- Allocate the manpower to do the upgrade/migration? Going from Win2000 to Win2k3 doesn't happen nearly "automagically enough". In fact I'm not brave enough to try an upgrade on company hardware blind. There is a lot of iffiness involved especially if you depend on software components installed on the same machine because simply put Win2K3 behaves a heck of a lot differently. If that machine does anything else but serving MS software then be prepared for some serious clean up aftwards.
- Does the company have the money? You said yourself "For the price of the server OS..." If their IT budget is stretched then it doesn't matter how spiftacular Win2K3 happens to be, it will be hard to justify spending more money on a system that is still working.
From my personal experience, the best route for upgrading servers is to buy a new machine and phase out the old machine migrating the domain/directory information(*). The trick is of course, how many small buisness have the cash to really do this right? It has always been my recommendation for small companies with stable Win2K servers, especially one doing domain controling, to keep them till they look like they are going to fail because they simply don't have the time or money to the solid upgrades. When your email and domain and gigs of hard drive files are on one machine a small company simply can't afford to have an "oops!" moment during upgrading.
(*) There is infact more steps here. I would have them buy the replacement machine and software, do an isolated install and bring up all of the hardware and software on the machine to make sure the components work, and do some integration tests with other workstations. So on and so forth.
Some of the software I *have* to run for work will not run at *all* on WinXP. Not to mention XP is a resource hog (even after turning all the bells & whistles off) compared to Windows 2000.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I've found a great way for Microsoft to get buyers to adopt thier now OSes. Drop the damn prices to something somewhat resonable and stop trying to fleece small to medium size businesses. Wow that was easy.
contrast this with OS X:
at the apple store near me, people WAITED IN LINE !, a line that stretched outside the store and through the mall, just to upgrade their OS to the newest version!
Uhm, the organization I'm currently working for still happily uses NT 4.0 workstation.
I'm a small business IT consultant and I once could label myself as a Microsoft hater. Not anymore. XP, for me, is just light years ahead of 2000...not only in stability but in features. Just think of having XWindows capabilities...remote terminal access...almost a necessity when you're trying to support a dozen different offices. From that standpoint alone, and organization could save tons of cash a year in not having to provide on site support for 100% of problems.
Add on the built in Windows Firewall, which certainly helps the less-able users keep their computers free of junk, and I'd say there's a very compelling reason to switch to XP.
Oh, yeah...and it's a TON faster. I know the Linux crowd won't be all that impressed...but I don't remember ever seeing any XP machine that takes 5 minutes to boot. Any 2000 machine that's been online for a year does that...(not really...but 2000 booting time is horrible).
During the 80's and 90's, I observed 3 causes of product upgrades.
- FUD upgrades at everything new the vendor offered.
- Curmudgeon upgrades only when performance or functionality required.
- A compromise: Upgrade on every other version.
Some product lines tended to reinforce this: Never use an even-numbered version of this OS or an odd-numbered version of that application.
The problem in the 2K vs XP debate is that Longhorn has taken much longer than previous versions.
I've frozen on Win2k because it's the last version that did not have the activation DRM. I imagine that's a huge concern for any enterprise. Or individual. Why would I want to install a version of Windows that MS could declare obsolete and lock me out of at any time, using their DRM? All they have to do is say something about the "lifecycle" and pull the plug. (Think they won't? I tried to install Windows Media Player 7 from an old CD on a fresh W2K repair install. The WMP7 CD will no longer install. Imagine finding that out with your OS during an emergency!)I might switch to Linux. But I won't upgrade.
Actiation is the only reason we don't switch.
I work at a medium sized manufacturing businuess.We have about 250 employees but only about 65 installed computers.
We don't have an IT department. I am an electrical engineer with product design, but because we don't have an IT department, that is one of the hats I sometimes wear.
We don't have a "platform" we support. We more upgrade as we go. Newer machines have 2000, older ones are still running 98 in some cases. Right now I am still installing 2000, not XP, and the reason for that is activation.
The price and features between the two are close enough that I don't really care. What I care about is the activation. It is insulting.
Their motives are transparent. They want to hook you up to a subscription. They can't make us do it though, so they're trying to do it one piece of a time. I'm not real interested in that.
When the EOL XP, will they stop granting activation? Now you have to upgrade. SUFFER, CATTLE!
Thats where the resistance comes from.
From the look of XP's default "Luna" theme, I thought they already had...? ;)
Then there's the XBox... which I suppose is a powerful gaming system but I refuse to own/use one on principle.
Yes, I've had to do this a number of times, actually. But one problem is, after you read off the long code over the phone to them, you may or may not get an activation key back.
I'm not quite sure what the limitations are, but Microsoft obviously has measures in place to limit the number of times someone can re-activate XP that way. I've had customers who radically changed and upgraded their PCs a number of times over the last few years. When they had a drive crash and no good backups, it was up to me to swap out their drive and re-install XP and their apps from scratch. Their key refused to activate again, because apparently, MS decided it had been re-activated too often already and they put some kind of "block" on the code.
I don't mind the activation when it works. When it doesn't I mind a lot. We image new and re-image existing Dell PCs here using ghost and every 5 PCs we get one where the (stuck on) licence key "doesn't work" and we have to call. There is no pattern to which will work (model, when purchased, etc.)
Except the stupid voice recognition system, which tells me my entries are "all right" and gives me little "ding" tones has NEVER worked for me. I end up talking to someone in India and in fairness they get the job done but the call usually costs me 15 minutes.
That said, it would be worse if we had to pay $150 for a service pack, like OS X.
... They are SO last-millenium.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
I think businesses are just being practical by not adopting each new release of software. Businesses do not want to risk having to lose business due to some instability and incompatability. At the advent of Win XP, people are probably just shifting from 98 and NT systems to 2000. I would think the probable reason for this is that by that time, 2000 has reached some maturity that many issues have been found and hopefully fixed. The compatibility of the software they use are going to surely work. People are probably on the verge of shifting to XP once Longhorn is released They would again, wait out for some couple or more years to see how Longhorn holds out for their business plan. I guess new software have their own surprises and the difficult part is that they are hard to anticipate.
Hell, we're still running Windows 98 SE on our production test machines.
The spin on this story seems to be that MS will be hurt because their customers aren't upgrading to Win XP.
The other fact that this story reveals is that many MS customers are so happy with Win 2K that they don't want to change. That inertia is far more damaging to the prospect of Linux on the desktop than it is to MS's bottom line.
The Corporate version of Windows XP does not require activation. Note: When you contact a big distributor, don't accept any statements that there is no Corporate version.
No arguments about XP product activation being a big negative for upgrading to it/using it. I've been on XP for quite a while now here at home, but that's on only one PC that won't really see any big upgrades or changes in the near future anyway.
For businesses, activation is just one more waste of time step and potential headache for the I.T. staff.
On the other hand, I always hear 2000 users make your #1 point; there's almost no difference between XP and 2000. I used to say that too, but having used XP extensively now, I'm less liable to make that statement now. For one thing, wireless networking support seems to be MUCH better in XP. On a 2000 box, you're always stuck using whatever support is included with your wireless NIC's driver CD/diskette. Sometimes that's fine, but I often find it cumbersome and glitchy. Letting XP natively manage the wi-fi card provides 1 consistent and fairly straightforward set of screens for users to navigate.
Yet more proof that the true enemy of 'better' is 'good enough'.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
A lot of people here talk about the upgrade like it is just a case of slapping in the disk and installing the new OS over the old one. In my experience it has never been that easy!
For example:
I recently upgraded a client's computer to XP. Why? Because she needed any features? No. Simply because the company that made her software insisted that they would give her absolutely no support, they would not even talk to her about problems with their software because she was running win98.
She was running a 950 Mhz PIII with 128M RAM and a 10G HD. Because the main app she runs is graphics intensive (lotsa digital pictures and graphics elements to be combined into reports) she only had 2G left on the HD. That's not enough for an XP install; new HD required. I always have better luck with a "clean" install anyway and it would be easier to move her data by copying from disk to another so this amde sense anyway. The app was already slowing down on win98 with 128M, more RAM would also be required.
To make a long story short, it took 12 hours to install XP, install all of the updates (luckily she had a high-speed connection and a firewall), move all of her data and install all of her applications again. Each appliaction was a special case with data stored in different places within the directory structure and in different formats.
Then the fun started: many of the extensions to her main application were only available via download from the web-site. She had paid for them and downloaded them before, but the software companies' stupid activation scheme kept her from downloading and installing them again on a different hard disk unless she paid for them again. We did all of this on a Friday to minimize disruption of her work-week, by the time we discovered this little flaw tewch support was closed and they didn't have any tech support on weekends!
So, her upgrade to XP cost $200 for XP Pro, $100 for a new 60G HD, $70 for 256M RAM, 12 hours of my time at $35/hour (and she gets a big break on my time because she is a long-time client) and THREE SOLID DAYS OF DOWNTIME because of software licensing and support issues.
Changing the OS on a Windows machine is NOT a trivial exercise. For Microsoft et al to treat it as such is a horrible, horrible mistake on their parts.
I expect to hear a lot from people about I should have ordered a new machine with XP Pro reloaded, etc. but notice that most of the costs in time and money were NOT involved with Windows or hardware, but with the apps and data associated with her business. That doesn't change no matter what hardware is involved.
I'm confused.
I thought Win2k was replacing NT, the business OS.
I thought Win XP was replacing Win98, the home computer OS.
So isn't it logical that XP isn't being used by businesses? I thought they weren't even targeting business users.
Granted, I mostly don't stick my head out of Lin-Lin-Land, so I'm outta the loop.
... and btw it works just fine on a old k6-2 400mhz with 128 ram. Try to get w2k on that and you are just fscked.
/. after all) we tryed RH/Debian/Mdk etc and running OO.org on those machines is as painful as trying to run w2k or XP. W98 in this scenario is like tha parent said: it just works
As for the labs I do work in Brazil, mostly non gov. organizations that do humanitary work, keeping those old computers running is the only way to provide a lot of ppl with the office tools they need to know when aplying for a initial job colocation.
And to add a bit of Linux to that (this is
I'm one of those who has not upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. It's not the software I dread, it's Microsoft's increasingly ridiculous enforcement of its own personal theory of Intellectual Property rigor. No, I'm not someone who cheats on licenses. I am meticulous about having valid licenses for all the machines in my home/office. HOWEVER, that means (a) I've paid for them and (b) I have the right number. It does NOT necessarily mean that when I have to reload a system, I have the kind of records to know whether the huge box of CD-ROM's I grab from my basement is organized enough to know that I've got the correct one of six disks. That means there's a huge chance as they get stronger with THEIR bookkeeping that one day it's going to start barfing at me about how I appear (to them) to have a disk that isn't the right one for this machine, or I appear to have two machines on the net using the same license. XP is even more strict about licenses than 2000, so I just dread their faulty software ragging on me.
Even just to install the later version(s) of Media Player, you have to agree to some awful license that lets it sniff out your machine and make its own determination (without asking for my input) about whether I'm in violation of their license policies.
And now they have other tools that are starting to do this as well.
And XP is full of "more of same", which is why I have resisted upgrading.
Why should I, a customer who believes he IS in compliance, fear these tools except because I don't trust Microsoft to implement them well and flexibly enough to do anything but screw me? Every time they are wrong, Microsoft gets another sale (or tries to) and I get no recourse. They can deny me bug fixes, upgrades, and so on based solely on their program's opinion of my license management practices.
This problem has to be worse at sites where installation is so complicated that machines are ghosted. Presumably in the ghosting case, you buy a heap of licenses, but then you copy a single image to all the different machines. Well, that's all well and good, but when you get all done, you're all apparently violators.
There's just a limit to what you can mechanically detect. And when you've got as much income as Microsoft plainly has, you need to learn to trust that most people must be paying you and not start to piss them off by treating them like they are cheaters.
They should be investing in tools that allow them to flexibly manage a sense of how many licenses you have at a site, and that don't make me dig around in my basement every time I need to do an upgrade and it wants me to find the original disk from which I installed something to prove I'm a real person. I've given them far too much real money and have been too staunch a supporter of software-for-fee to be treated this way.
Trying to force me into upgrading to a product that treats me worse by cutting support for one that does not is no way to engender my customer loyalty. Maybe if Microsoft doesn't care, it's time to start complaining to the various tools that I (again) BUY on Microsoft's platform and tell them I'm going to be jumping ship from Microsoft and that means I won't be buying their tools any more unless they run on Linux or Apple or wherever I end up. If Microsoft doesn't hear my little voice, maybe it will hear the voices of the tools that I want that are the only reason I buy from Microsoft. Maybe if I could buy Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop for Linux (please don't tell me Gimp is good enough, because it's just not), I wouldn't have to buy Microsoft at all.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I still run windows win2k pro at home and plan to remain with it until new programs stop supporting it. At work though I've had to set up machines with xp. XP out the box default settings are incredibly annoying but I have to say if you take the time to configure one machine and then make an image of it you can make it even more functional then win2k. I set all the layout looks back to classic mode, installed tweak ui power toys, including the iso recorder, so now all systems have built in burning capacity for standard data as well as iso's. In addition I've read win2k doesn't support hyperthreading while xp does so if your machine runs new intel p4's you're better off with XP, at home though I still run an overclocked athlon xp so win2k is just as good. I still think win2k is a little less bloated and if you're after maximum speed one should go with setting up win2k over xp, but with 2.8p4's and above the speed hit you take with xp is negligble, and with hyperthreading I've noticed the 2.8ghz dell optiplex's are faster with basic tasks then my o/c athlon 2100 at 2.2Ghz.
The best situation that I have had in domain environments is Windows 2003 Server with XP Professional Workstation. The XP Pro machines join the domains and can access the Exchange server with less issues than anyother setup I have worked with. Maybe I'm not doing things right, or maybe I'm a moron, but Windows 2000 machines have some issues loging in due to searching for the DNS. And in situations where there is a Windows 2000 Server, there are sometimes problems with the workstations using Exchange.
large corporations do that, but most business is small and mid sized business, and they go ALOT longer with computers. At work I have a p-II running win2k pro at a 24 person business, mainly doing quotes and SOW for datacenter systems. Since MS is still providing security updates for win 98, why would anyone upgrade?
I have used Win 3.11(with patched), 98 (SP2), and I'm happy with 2000(SP2). So hopefully Longhorn will follow suit and be just as good in inovations and stability.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Only reason you'd replace a Win2k workstation really, is if you were rolling out new PCs - in a corporate environment, XP has very little to offer over 2k.
Sure, some of the features are nice (firewall, cleartype), but some are a liability (universal PnP service, etc) - and *none* of them are really "must haves".
At home - Win2k will run any games windows XP will run... so no huge benefit there really either. Again, the firewall is nice, but most AV packages (which you do need) include one anyway...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I seriously ponder replacing my Win98SE with 2K, but my priority for Windows are games (I do all the other stuff on Linux anyway), so will most games (especially old ones, DOS times etc) run on it?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Happy as the proverbial pig in shit at the moment :)
There's issues to sort out before this be possible at work (will not happen in a long time, entrenched AD domain, etc) - but eventually I reckon most applications are going to become thin-client based, and OS will be irrelevant anyway :)
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
3. Window pane focus changes. This one I just don't understand. In 2k, if I open Windows Explorer in folder view, I can use the scroll wheel to scroll the pane that the mouse is over. In XP, I have to click the pane first to scroll. This probably doesn't affect many people but for those that it does, it is super annoying.
I remember back in Windows 3.1 with the Logitech mouse. You could use the scroll-wheel in ANY place with a scrollbar and it would work. Just like you said, no need to "click to focus". I miss that.
I do notice however in multiple instances of firefox, you can just hover & scroll(no clicking) and it scrolls just fine for you. Maybe it's an app-level quirk now? If so, I wish everyone would do it, but ultimately at an OS level a focus-agnostic scroll would be 100 times better.
I told him it was a P3/800 with 128MB of RAM, which really wasn't even enough to run Win2K efficiently. He said, "oh, that's more than enough to run XP. XP's so much better than Windows 2000. I haven't had to look for a driver disk since I started using XP."
Needless to say, I stuck with Win2K and never asked him for any computer-related help whatsoever because I knew he was a well-meaning idiot.
Support. That's why my company is beginning our XP deployment in the next few months. We can't have our 40k users running an unsupported OS. Although, I too still prefer Win2k. :)
Mod parent up. We went through this last time Slashdot posted this. It's mainstream support that's ending, and extended support will continue until 2010. That's right, 2010. Not one month from now.
R.Mo
Microsoft is not cutting support. Windows 2000 is going into Extendded support meanng Microsoft will not do any non-security feature enhancements to the product. Upgrades are very hard to force upon people and even if you restrict access to a product like refuse IE7 to Win2k customers for example, customers will still find a way around it.
online updates..
I WAS booting into 2k just fine, no problems at all, until..
I just took a virgin install of 2000 (this morning) and ran the online update. It of course downloaded service pack 4 and IE 6, then a bunch of misc patches.
After numerous reboots, it came to the last big hurah and downloaded that last few security updates.
Reboot and after leaving the 2000 logo screen, instant BSOD and reboot. No getting past it, I tried pressing F8 to boot into safe mode. No go..
So now I have a box that will no longer boot windows.
It has Suse 9.3 on it also so I just let it boot into that, which is what I use 99.9% of the time anyway.
The ONLY reason I even have windows on any machine I own is so that I can use the video capture on my Gainward/Nvidia VIVO GF4 Ti4200 card.
The RivaTV project is dead in the water, they haven't touched it in over a year and it does NOT work anyway.
I am so pissed that I spent so much on that card and I can't use it under Linux. And now I can't boot the Windows partition either. I don't want to reinstall windows all over again and f**k up my Linux install..
What a pain in the ass. God I hate Windows. And I hate f**king proprietary hardware too.
And I don't want to buy another GD capture card, I want to use the one I already have right now and have only gotten to use like 2 times in two years.
We have nearly 100% win 2k desktops here even though we are on a win 2k3 domain with mostly win2k3 servers. The problem is this time around some major pieces of software for us (we are a municipal government) are not winxp certified yet. The oracle databases that these run on work happily in the new environment, but the database applications themselves are lagging behind in support for the (not so) new (anymore) OS.
It's a pain because there are some fetures of XP/2k3 domains we'd like to have, but we're stuck.
I never considered Windows XP to be an upgrade from Windows 2000. Sure, it's newer, but it has more bloat and hogs more system resources. The only thing that I might consider useful is XP's built in CD writing capability. But not trusting Microsoft with regard to DRM, I'll stick with Nero.
My only experience with XP was my daughter's IBM A50 machine which came with XP home edition. As soon as I opened IE, popups started to arrive - Much more than was normal for a Windows 2000 machine. Now, this was a brand new machine straight out of the box from IBM. I installed Norton AV and Ad-Aware - The system was clean. The popups were associated with something new called MSN messenger or Windows messenger - I'm not sure which. This messenger component was also linked to Outlook Express. I had to add add a couple of registry entries to turn it off - which fixed the IE popup problem. The latest service pack allows windows/MSN messenger to be uninstalled from the control panel under add/remove windows components.
I've also found that Windows XP tends to fight you with configuration issues. You're forced to use their wizard to do everything for you. I was very tempted to upgrade my daughters XP machine to Windows 2000. I havent found any advantage of using Windows XP over Windows 2000.
IMHO Windows XP is a downgrade from Windows 2000. I'll be sticking with Windows 2000 for the forseeable future. It works well and requires little maintenance. Hopefully IE7 will work under Windows 2000, but then Firefox is my primary browser.
I don't think it was ever slashdot's agenda to be "taken seriously" by people who won't "get" the borg icon. Those people are suits, and don't belong here. :)
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I would partially agree with you. I would amend what you said with "They're either large orgs with large IT budgets for upgrade, OR they've bought a couple new servers but haven't bothered to upgrade their domain to Win2k3."
That is where we're at: We have 2003 servers because it is what our server vendor ships, and because we have a couple server based apps that prefer Win2k3. But we've yet to find any reason to upgrade or windows 2000 AD domain to Win2k3. I suspect that a lot of people on Windows 2000 Active Directory will be there for a very long time. Until some major feature (like Exchange) doesn't function with Windows 2000 domains anymore, why would they?
Who did what now?
I don't think I'd ever go to my boss and try to justify upgrading our stable Windows 2000 servers to Windows XP.(*)
Although I might suggest upgrading to Windows 2003 Server.
(*) I'm not a computer expert, but I play one on slashdot.
I bet the only reason half the businesses are running XP is because it came with new computers. What I'd like to see is a measure of how many businesses went out of their way to upgrade.
;-)
I bet very few. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and overall, Windows 2000 ain't broke.
To be honest, as a Windows user I can't imagine ever having a reason to upgrade my Microsoft OS again. Sure, I've bought laptops with XP and I like using it, and I upgraded the family PC from the nightmarish Windows 98 to XP Home so my kids could still play all their Windows 9x games and I didn't have to fix the *#&^ thing every other day. But here at work we run mostly Windows 2000 and I can't imagine why we'll ever change.
Victims of their own success. Maybe Microsoft Research should finish up that time machine so they can go back and sabotage Windows 2000 so more people will buy XP.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
While I agree with what you are saying, basically, there's one thing I would contend with. Your last statement, about why upgrade away from Win 98?
I can very much see someone staying on Windows 2000. I thought Windows 2000 was the first really robust OS from Microsoft. It has some issues, but so does every operating system. In certain regards, I think Win2k is almost better than WinXP.
But, there are EXTREMELY compelling reasons to upgrade from Windows 98. It tends to have many more stability issues. It has almost no security really built into the OS, so it's easily compromised. It doesn't have as well developed a networking client for Windows/Samba networking as compared to Win2k. It supports NTFS (which, while less compelling than some of the other options, NTFS is in many regards a better filesystem than FAT32).
I personally see no reason why anyone would continue to run Win98, unless they either have old enough hardware that running Win2k is impractical, or they just cannot afford to upgrade (in which case, they should consider a desktop Linux solution *grin*; Win98 MUST DIE).
No one seems to have mentioned this - ClearType for use on TFT screens, only reason I use XP instead of 2k on the WinBox at home now.
Keep in mind 2K was the last "easily pirated" MS-OS. This might be a reason for its longevity. Plus, even if you're not pirating it, it's much easier to (legally) move it from machine to machine (no product activation).
This does not work when your customer buys heavy trucks, milling machines, or office furniture, a few million dollars worth at a time. Now that computing is a commodity, it's no longer working for operating systems.
I'll bet we see a life extension on Windows 2000. Microsoft sales reps are going to call on corporate information officers and see a Red Hat box on the desk during negotiations.
Note that Dell gets this. See their Windows 2000 page. "Dell offers the entire Windows 2000 Server family factory-installed across our enterprise server/storage product lines. Not only does Dell offer Windows 2000 support on new hardware, we also provide tools to help you assess and upgrade your current infrastructure."
I think all Linux zealots should have a Win9x box around so they relive the glory days of Linux vs. BSOD. That's the only reason I can see for running a Win9x system.
Once again, people will only upgrade when there is some tangible benefit. People upgraded to 2000 because many applications and drivers were released *only* for 2000. Then XP came out, and unless your app is really obscure, all "XP" programs will run on 2000. Except for possibly (I never bothered to check) MSes own products.
If Longhorn apps and drivers work *only* on Longhorn, then guess what, people will upgrade. Businesses too.
-- I have fans? Wow.
Jorge Canelhas
Retro Review Magazine
For retro computing fans...
http://www.retroreview.com/
Ye Gods! How DARE people be satisfied with a fairly stable OS in favor of one that is possibly even buggier than XP!?
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
My old highschool still uses Win 2k not because it is better but because the school tech guy(s) hate WinXP. Another reason is that most of the people at the school (techers and students) who use computers cant get used to new interfaces because they look different (if their inbox button isn't in EXACTLY the right spot, its an instant call to tech support). Because of WinXPs candy coated interface, we can't use it because all of the students and staff are used to the ultitarian look of Win2K.
Speaking is NOT communication
I'm glad that I don't have to pay to use the knowledge base and especially glad that Google finds articles in the Microsoft database faster that Microsoft does, cause those are the only answers to problems with the server, desktop, and apps that I have ever gotten from Microsoft.
Small network, 4 W2k servers, Exchange 2000, SQL Server 2000, several Linux servers, 40 users on a mix of W2k and XPsp2, MS Office, OOo, and a couple of inhouse apps, no big deal, but I'm glad I don't have to rely on the Redmond bandit for help.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
We had licenses for all the machines, but reactivating 10 times a week got old very fast (especially for the test machines, which were rebuilt in different configurations and reimaged constantly).
They explicitly do not want you rebuilding / reloading machines on a regular ongoing basis as a consumer of their operating system.
- They want you to buy a machine with the XP installed already, and only use it just the way the machine was equipped and configured from the vendor. After all you agreed to that when you accepted the license.
- If you change your machine's hardware, they want to consider that to then be a different machine, and hence, a need for you to buy a new license for it. The reason is so that they can sell more licenses.
- If you wish to be in the regular habit of constantly changing hardware around they desire you to buy a new machine each and every time configed with that specific set of hardware you desire, and of course a new O/S license on each and every one. The reason is so that the computer makers (e.g. Dell, HP, etc) can sell more hardware and MS can sell more licenses.
- MS wishes ultimately to force an end to the "do-it-yourselfer" hobbiest computer builder, to make all home consumers of computers buy them only from commercial computer makers in rigidly fixed sets of hardware configurations and also put an end to the corporations who build and maintain their own hardware in house... all in the name of propping up commerce for Dell/HP/etc, and of course themselves. In their minds, when your current computer hardware breaks, or if you would like to change out / upgrade some of your hardware , then if you don't buy a whole machine from a system vendor, then you are "stealing business" from such vendors.
It's quite simple how to get many people to upgrade. Create a piece of software that people want/need to use and make sure that it only runs on Longhorn.
Otherwise there is really no reason for people to give up something that works. If it wasn't for Adobe After Effects 6.0 I would still be running ME. I know, I know, but I had one of the three stable, well running ME systems in the country. It wasn't until there was software I couldn't run that I felt the need to give up something that worked for a new OS.
They extended on NT4, they'll extend on 2000.
Lets face it, NT4 was around for how long?
For the most part there isn't any need to switch to Win XP on most of the machines in my office. Matter of fact, only XP machines we've got are new machines and all in the IT staff.
Other divisions got new hardware with 2000 installed so it wouldn't break some of our applications.
And I'm loathe to continue the trend with MS anyhow. This constant upgrade cycle has gotten a little tiring.
Red Hat 9 is still being updated via the Fedora Legacy project and associated repositories.
So it might be argued, that EOL is an overrated marketing speak concept. Sometimes an EOL product is still rather well supported. Other times I have experienced not yet EOL'd products suffer from very poor to non-existing support, because the software supplier had started to withdraw oxygen by removing all of their better people from supporting that product.
So I have become very weary of EOL marketing speak.
I'm not joking. Until two years ago, the major hospital where I work (I am a doctor) had these dusty little boxes for checking lab results that booted from a floppy. They were used to connect to a text-based program called Merlin, which actually worked OK. Now they have replaced all of them with fairly current machines running - TaDa! - Windows 2000. I've never seem XP at the hospital.
to WindowsXP on my game machine at home.
The reason was Battlefield 2, which runs on XP only.
I'd suspect that it's going to create a small jump in the # of Windows XP installs (legitimate or not).
David
With the eye-candy disabled, XP is just a more up-to-date Win2K
Not even close. I have a box that runs perfectly when w2k is installed. When I put XP on it, the sound card doesnt work right (But I suppose a Soundblaster16 PCI card is a pretty esoteric card to test drivers aginst...), and SP2 destroys the machine's ability to connect to any sort of a network. (Again, a 3com 905 seriese NIC are pretty much unheard of, right?)
XP is GARBAGE. They even crippled some of the features that W2K had for XP, so they could sell more expensive versions of the OS. You can run a webserver from W2k Pro, try doing that with XP Pro.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Granted, it's intended for games, but DOSBox is a very good way to accomplish running DOS based applications.
Also, look at VMWare
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Ah, the weekly "OMG Users havn't switched from the last version of windows yet!" /. post :).
I recommend following a site like Microsoft Monitor for some insights about this - its referred to as Windows Fragmentation and its been going on for quite some time.
In fact, its probably why Microsoft is taking its pretty time with Longhorn - a lot of business havn't switched yet - and while they wait for Longhorn the businesses switch to XP, thus giving MS another upgrade opprotunity (XP->LH).
So that's why if MS used Apple's model for instance (every 2 years or so) they would have a LOT of fragmentation (people using different/older systems) which is generally not good for profits I'm assuming...
As for 2000 - personally I switched to XP a week ago and it fixed one big problem for me - as I usually use some shell extensions that crash sometimes. On Win2k sometimes the explorer would crash and never come back - but on XP it always comes back correctly after a crash. XP does have a wierd bug where sometimes you can't force a program to quit though.
Everyone saying that W2K is great are correct, of course. But the funny part is that soon, Micrsoft will be forced to begin FUDding their own platform to cause people to upgrade to the next version of Windows. That makes laugh. That makes laugh, smile, guffaw, and just feel good inside.
There is a lesson here also though, although it's not a new one: the capitalist system actually works better when you're selling something that wears out or breaks down in time--so the whole system is, to some degree, fundamentally antithetical to notion of good, solid robust software which should not really wear out as time goes by. Point to ponder. Word to the wise.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I think people are forgetting what a change Windows 2000 was compared to Windows NT 4.0. The amount of effort required to migrate a large, established NT 4 domain set to Active Directory is huge. 2000 to 2003 isn't as big a migration...mostly broken apps are the main concern, not seamlessly moving 50,000 users and workstations from one authentication method to another without changing their passwords or access rights!!
Because of this, a lot of large organizations still have lots of Win2K and even NT in them. Very large and very small companies tend to hold off on upgrades as long as possible. Coming from a place with lots of NT, I can tell you that we're only migrating off NT because hardware that supports it simply isn't available anymore.
The other factor is the length of some migration projects and contracts. Corporate timescales just don't natch the release schedules Microsoft and other companies are pushing for now.
Plus it's stable, and we all know what happens when MSFT releases new code.
So, when MSFT releases a new version of Office that actually has some real improvements that add something, then business will switch, if they haven't migrated to Linux by then.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 2000 by the end of this month..."
Makes a rather compelling reason to switch to Linux or other open source alternative.
Wow... it never ceases to amaze me the bias of some people around here.
You're comparing actions of RH at a time when they were trying to rapidly phase out their consumer editions. This is the orange.
Gee I am so glad that I was not a consumer of theirs at the time being. Can you imagine if MS tried pulling this charade: "Yes, we are going to discontinue W2K Home because we frankly see no business value in it. You have one year to upgrade to XP."
The Redhat 'apple' I'm referring to is RHEL 2.1/3/4 that gets at least 3 years of support. As far as I know, RHEL 2.1 is still supported and RHEL 4 is out now.
In that case, Ill take the orange any time. Not only I will get 10 full years of support but also MS has never pulled this "rapid phase out of consumer editions" on me.
My other OS is the MCP!
I agree networking is so much better under XP. I love having to manually reconfigure my network connection when I move between networks not using dhcp.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform...
It's not about competing with oneself. It's about people not wanting to upgrade. It's not so much that they like Win2K, it's that they don't want WinXP. There are many reasons for this. They don't like the price, they feel no need to upgrade, they don't want to upgrade their hardware, they don't want to go through the upgrade hassle, they don't want to give Microsoft anymore of their money, etc.
Unlike the average Slashdot geek, businesses are very conservative. They don't relish change for change's sake. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you don't need to spend the money, keep it in your wallet. If it doesn't help you achieve your goals, ignore it. And as strange as it may seem to Slashdot and Bill gates, to your average business, there's nothing embarassing about possessing a 100Mhz PI.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Businesses are forced into constantly mixing their base operating system because Microsoft keeps deciding application X, Y, or Z is part of the OS and releases a new version of the OS. Each version pushes another one off the support list. Personally, I think it should be the applications that should be driving this and not the OS but regardless, THIS is a key "feature" of GNU/Linux and OSS that businesses need to know.
Businesses don't own the operating system their business software runs on. They rent it. Because of this, they are periodically forced to deal with mixed OS environments and and OS upgrades when the lastest and greatest version of their business apps don't require such upgrades. They can't even hire someone to support them when because Microsoft owns the source code.
With GNU/Linux and OSS, they can move when they are ready and when their business apps require them to upgrade the OS. Many times, it's not even going to require a full OS upgrade either. I just loved how MS refused to add USB support to Win95 so people upgraded to Win98 mostly for the USB support. I think the same think went for NT too.
When Microsoft pulls the rug out from under it's customers, we should promote how this can't happen on the OSS side. Sure, 10 years later it might be difficult to find a large number of people to support older kernels/drivers/apps but there will be consultants to take up the task. You'll have to be larger than IBM, Sony, and GM to get Microsoft to help you 10 years later.
IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The other fact that this story reveals is that many MS customers are so happy with Win 2K that they don't want to change. That inertia is far more damaging to the prospect of Linux on the desktop than it is to MS's bottom line.
Well when Microsoft stopps supporting Win2K, and a company is left with computers that have an upgrade path they do not like - why would they not consider Linux as an alternative? Perhaps it's time for a Distro explcitly meant to install over Win2K with Wine support for all the Windows apps it finds. Then you have a secure upgrade that gives you modern tools and a path other than one involving expensive licences.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When 2K came out, I pushed as hard as I could for upgrades for me (+/-)200 users. 95/98 was slow, unstable, and a pain in the ass.
Of course, given how management prioritizes things.... well, let's just say they didn't, and I finally got everyone done last year.
Of course, now, I have a stable, fast OS, on decent hardware, runs everything I need it too... frankly, with no "killer app" on the horizon, I have no plans for upgrades anytime soon. Even when (if?) Longhorn comes out... I just have no compelling reason to update. If these things are still running when the final End-Of-Life comes and there are no longer any critical security updates issued... hell, I'm behind a firewall with A/V on every machine, I may just consider keeping them longer.
That's the wonderful problem with quality vs. capitalism... if you build something good, strong, sturdy, and long-lived... you get to sell it once.
If you build a piece of crap that falls apart in a year... you get to sell it over and over.
My big concern with XP is that, when it's 5 years is up, Microsoft may say "Sorry folks, we're turning off the activation servers! If you want software, upgrade to WinMe2008!".
Sorry Bill... you made something that actually works and doesn't cause me trouble. Until my office is swept away by a tsunami and I have to replace all my hardware... well, you won't get my money, but I'll think fondly of you.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
a release costs marketting, but also resets upgrade paths, microsoft have seen companies arenot ready to jump from 2k to xp, and dont want them to skip longhorn, they want to be back on the rails for longhorn, with all their engineered flaws that will show up and cause people to trickle their money back into M$ pockets.
Plus, they lost some key staff, and now microsoft are playing catch up by hiring some open source people, which I think is daft.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
We were back up in less than a day without having to do any reinstalls of software. The best part is that we didn't need a new license! I seriously doubt if XP would allow that many hardware changes without buying a new license.
We purchased another workstation about a year ago that came with Windows XP on it and it ran extremely slow compared to the Win2K system. Many of our third-party programs refused to install or even run. We purchased another Win2K package and installed it and the performance jumped up significantly! Third-party programs installed and ran properly. We were back in business.
I can't justify going to XP because:
Obviously, Redmond hasn't got a clue about their customer and if they do, they obviously don't care.
Database & data warehouse, file servers, mail and web servers and such all run on Linux or BSD. Once third party vendors start to port their apps to Linux, we would be extremely happy to migrate away from Windows all together. A lot of Open Source is there but not enough yet. Many in-house programs are already ported to the Linux systems.
We'll stay with Win2K even after it has past "End-of-Life" because, if it ain't broke - Don't fix it!
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
I understand that they want you to buy their new shit to make some cash but I don't know why they keep this pattern of pushing people to upgrade to more powerful hardware. Its not like they are making profit if you upgrade your hardware. I'll be the first to buy a 50$ 2 years customer support extension for my windows 2000 in order to be able to continue to use my old Pentium 3 who is more than enough to make web development. I am sure that thousands of business owners think the same way I do.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
WinXP is a stepping stone, why upgrade.
We all know longhorn is the OS of the future.
XP is the test bed on migrating 9x and NT into one package. Anyone with two brain cells knows to wait till the SR or next version.
win95 and 98 both sucked until the SR.
XP SR will be Longhorn.
I agree completely. I would never purchase Windows XP for the purpose of upgrading a machine that shipped with Windows 2000.
However, I would never install Windows 2000 on a desktop or laptop that shipped with Windows XP. VERY_LARGE_COMPANY_WHERE_I_WORK has done exactly that. They have installed Windows 2000 on machines that were never certified because they felt they needed to enforce a corporate standard. Now they are pulling their hair out trying to install Windows XP (pro) on all of their desktop machines as part of a multi million dollar initiative. The early findings are that if they have just supplied and supported a mixed environment, life would have been much easier in the long run.
Have you Meta Moderated t
Why would anyone want to exchange a working system that allows hardware upgrades and does not spy on its customers or intrude on its customers property rights or software and hardware security for a sorry product like XP. Any product that even 'maybe' shows a 'possibility' of becoming a 'subscription' product, like XP with its 'activation requirement', is a loser. The only ones who benefit from it are microsoft and its cartel partners. If they thought it was so good, why then is all liability disclaimed in its 'limited warrantees'. They don't even believe their software is worth the price of its packaging. Software used to come with voluminious manuals. Present software manuals are a joke. A PDF is not a manual. Some of these are not even on the supplied CD's, but are in the internet instead. And just what does microsoft intend to do with all the consumer data it collects. I can think of a few customers.......consumer reporting agencies.....dun&bradstreet credit reports.....medical information bureau....business software alliance.....homeland security (somebody might think that because you have a database you might have terrorist tendancies or be a latent whatever)...health insurance information collection clearinghouses....retail sales marketing organizations....hell even the door to door vacuum cleaner salemen and the holy roller religious nuts......and your business competitors (for a fee of course)
...The best story I know of personally is with a notebook demanding reactivation for hardware changes during an XP trial while the user was on the road in a remote location with no way to activate...
Is it David Coursey that you're referring to?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Oh, sure, you're pretty clever. Install IIS from the CD. Did you check to see how the capacity of IIS has been altered on XP pro, Einstein?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I used to work at ScotiaBank for a Grade 12 co-op program, and my mom has worked there for almost 30 years now as a programmer, so I know a fair abit about how they work. All their Windows PCs that I know of still run Windows 2000, with no plans to upgrade to Windows XP in the future. I doubt ScotiaBank will upgrade to longhorn when it comes out either, but thats just speculation.
Indeed. We have an agreement with MS. We have XP and the rest of the catalog, or plenty of it. We have one license string for each product, and unlimited applications of the code. And no activation.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Perhaps one of the reasons 2000 had such a high adoption rate was because of how long it came out after NT 4.0. 98 had already come out (twice!), doing things that, for a "home" OS, their "professional" OS couldn't handle (like installing onto a partition bigger than 2 GB). Consider at the time of its release NT had 4 service packs out already (and now, after support has officially ended, 4.0 had a grand total of 6-and-change service packs, not counting the final security roll-up).
On the other hand, about the time Windows XP came out, I got my special "early adopter" MCSE Win2k card from Microsoft.
I work for a state government agency and can definitely beleive that many of the machines in use run Windows 2000. Mainly because we are in the same position. My agency is not funded as well as others, so we don't have the money to pay for software assurance to keep up to date. We pretty much have a four to five year replacement cycle for computers (assuming we have money available in our equipment fund), and the OS is bought bundled with the hardware. So four years after XP was released, we are about 45% XP / 50% W2k / 5% Other. Most of those XP machines have just been upgraded this year (some as recently as today). If longhorn comes out next year, it will be at least 4 years until we switch over to it.
Quoth one new Linux convert: "We paid top dollar for our new operating system, four years went by that were a blur of security alerts and patches, and then it was time to pay top dollar for a new operating system again!"
...that if the same license is activating two computers with drastically different hardware that maybe you're pirating.
I'm facing exactly that dilemna right now. Last night we got hit by a big thunderstorm, and lightning took out my computer. The motherboard and network card got fried, but everything else in the machine is OK -- tested out the rest of the parts in a friend's machine. An exact replacement for the motherboard impossible to get since it is nearly two years old and they're not around anymore. Today, I bought a new mobo & ram from Fry's and a new video card since the old mobo had integrated video, and the new mobo has an integrated network interface to cover the separate nic that got fried. Tonight, I'll find out if I'm going to have hell with my Windows Product Activation since my operating system contents on the hard drive will be like Rip Van Winkle waking up in a new century with a different chipset mobo, different network interface, different sound and different video. Still have the same processor chip, same case, same power supply, same monitor, same keyboard, different mouse however (was changed several months ago), and same CD/DVD and CD/RW drives, different hard drive, because the original failed under warranty over a year ago and got replaced with a bigger one which of course required a re-install of XP and a 2nd time re-activation of the XP o/s. To me it's still the same machine, just repaired with some newer parts. It Microsoft going to call it a whole new machine and not reactivate my existing WinXP, expecting me to buy a new expensive license?
What will Longhorn be when it is finally released. A bunch of DRM shit? More M$ Network offerings? A new search (Google works fine)? What will be the "Value Added"? Or will it be just another stroke in the "painting users into a corner" canvas?
Rick B.
spider just isn't as good as freecell so people in the office still play freecell
Some people believe 1-1=3 and for the sake of being politically correct, we should respect their differences
I think the fisher price look is better than the gray ass world of 2k and earlier. You can tell where the Close button is without looking at it, because the periphery sees color, but can't read. The default background color isn't god awful gray, but a pleasant yellow, which is easier on the eyes (think yellow legal pads). And cleartype alone is worth it.
Aside from the looks, most of the interface is jacked up, i'll give you that. But that's not because of the skin.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Ah yes. Exactly why Red Hat Linux 7.0 is still supported and useful.
Oh, wait--it's not. OSS makes no fucking difference, and the GNU license is dramaticall hurting Linux's entry into the business world.
People are relatively happy with 2k
At the product EOL offer continued 2k support for a monthly fee - but not priced like their previous subscription attempts.
This would provde the stability that business requires and using the OS they desire.
Fix the EULA to get MS's hands off my software and out of my data and I would consider something past Win2K,sp2, other then Linux.
Huh? Are you saying you *don't* have this same issue when using Win2K?
I don't understand. If you're not using DHCP, you're probably using a static (fixed) IP address. If so, then it's going to stay locked in, as-is, no matter what network you join. If it happens to be incorrect for the new network you join, it's going to stay incorrect until you manually change it to something usable. That's just how TCP/IP works.
Or am I completely missing/forgetting something?
Let's see. If they migrated from Windows to Linux, they'd need...
1) Support people who understand Linux. That means either crosstraining their existing staff ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially personal resistance), or hiring new people ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially faction conflicts)
Yes, but cost saves could render that worthwhile and some people on board might be willing to do so. For smaller companies this could be very easy if it's just one or two guys to train (it was that way at a company of around 80 employees I worked for). GM might have some problems sure but there are a LOT of small business around.
2) Support from their vendors. "You're running AutoCad 2005 on WHAT?! Sorry, can't help you."
Now you make that sound like that support is worth anything to begin with, much less the per-instance fees that everyone gets charged now. And how many programs really need "support" now anyway? Yes a bunch of guys running Autocad might have an issue and it probably wouldn't make sense to switch them. But are they really the users still running Win2K? For the most part I'd say no. It's all the guys that are pretty much using Office, Office, and more Office. If they can work after an upgrade with similar tools they'll be fine. Really the access replacment is the missing piece of the puzzle which is why OO needed that sooner rather than later.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I bought my first copy of Windows 2000 on the first official day of release of Windows XP, and I've never regretted the choice. I did it entirely in protest of several issues, one specific to Windows XP: the activation system.
I will never buy Windows XP; I may never buy another Windows OS period. That was part of my intention at the time, but I haven't lived up to that stipulation. I had hoped to be free from Windows at least, if not Win32 software, by now, but alas I'm not. Part of that's laziness, but Windows yet still dominates software with respect to diversity and number of choices. It also still dominates diversity with respect to hardware choices as well, but that may change, too.
I will feel less hypocritical when the day comes that I can make the transition and thumb my nose at you-know-who without guilt or a sense of loss.
It may well be the case that no-one wants to buy it, that's for sure.
I want to watch with glee as MS crash and burn with Longhorn. I already am, as feature after feature doesn't make it, and the OS is still likely to be delayed.
Bwah hah hah.
Still, it's no good if someone else doesn't get in on the act. And it won't be Linux (thankfully). Hopefully something that's a departure from the past. Even better would be if IBM pull a rabbit from the hat and we get a Cell-based desktop architecture to go with some new OS(es?) and finally move on from the PC architecture.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
To Slashdot or not to Slashdot. That is the question (that will cause me to fail an interview)
that bit I threw in about windows 98 was about my 500MHz Celeron (with 128K cache, oooo) 256MB RAM home windows computer which I fire up a few times a year to do taxes, run my win-photo printer or win-scanner. Each time I do I get the latest load of updates from Microsoft. I just don't see any reason to spend $100 or whatever it is to upgrade to XP, working fine. When it dies I'll consider whatever the current flavor of Windows is. It does SMB to my main Linux box just fine, btw.