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Microsoft Squeezes Win2000 Users
darkonc writes "InformationWeek has a story on how Microsoft is squeezing Windows 2000 users as Vista and Office 2007 are being released. While some new software is legitimately unable to run on Windows 2000, other software (like MS's anti-spyware product) will install and run flawlessly — but only if you remove an explicit check for Windows 2000 in the installer." The article notes that other vendors, for example Sun, have more liberal and flexible support policies for legacy products.
On several occasions, I have recently gone into a couple of local banks and while I was standing in line, I noticed the words "Windows 2000" on their screen savers. I have noticed the same thing at several other business as well. Apparently many businesses that have not felt the need to upgrade.
I can confirm that a major British bank uses nothing older than WinNT on the desktops for the back office. It's a closed network so the security issues are less and there is no driver to upgrade to anything later, indeed, there are plenty of economic drivers to keep the PCs on NT.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
At least when I open up the Task Manager on XP, every Task uses at least 5MB of RAM, while on 2k most of the Tasks use less than 1MB
:-/
This is strange, because on my test install of Vista, most tasks use less than 5 MB of RAM.
And yes, that's even the total working set, not just the private.
About 30 of 38 use less than 5 MB now.
Maybe MS split up some of their tasks into more processes though, not really sure about this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Some distros are significantly faster. The thing about Linux is that it's not one operating system, it's a huge collection of different distributions, each tailored for different needs. Damn Small Linux is going to fill a different niche than Gentoo, which will fill a different nice than Ubuntu or Red Hat, etc. etc.
Linux can use any number of GUIs, or no GUI at all. If you want something significantly faster than Windows, don't use Gnome or KDE, as these are a bit bloated (or "fully-featured", if you want to put it nicely). Use XFCE or IceWM or Fluxbox, instead.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Oh yeah, well my anecdotal evidence is more convincing than your anecdotal evidence!
How about this: a non-negligible number of people changed the UI back to "Windows Classic," and others would if they knew how.
No, "they" don't. Whoever "they" is.
Out of the box, most distros have a GNOME or KDE desktop with a structure that's quite similar to Windows, sure. Why is that? Because that's what most people who are using Linux for the first time are comfortable with. The distros install a default look that's similar to Windows in order to make it familiar.
However, when you take a look at the desktops of more serious Linux users, people who have been using it for a while, they begin to lose their Windows-ness pretty quickly, some in subtle ways, some in very obvious ways. Mine's not as different as the other guy who responded to you, but it gets less and less Windows-like all the time. The equivalent of the start menu disappeared a long time ago, because I never use it. Where the "start" menu was is my pager application, that allows me to pick which of my virtual desktops to use. Next to it is the system tray (a good idea that Windows picked up from Unix UIs), organized so that 'klipper' is nearest the easily-reached corner position. That's the applet that lets me pick which of the last 40 things I cut I want to select for pasting. I have a task bar, but it's configured to work very differently from the Windows version of the same thing.
If you start looking at behavior, it gets even more different. Focus-follows-mouse is a huge difference, and one that nearly all experienced Unix/Linux users prefer. I like single-click activation. It's fairly rare that all of the windows displayed on my screen are actually running on the computer connected to the screen. A large portion of my work is actually done on command lines -- not because I can't do it graphically, but because the CLI is more efficient. My desktop can hold icons, but rarely does (Alt-F2 plus a working /tmp eliminate the majority of reasons people put stuff on their desktop).
The Windows-ish look is just a default put there for people who don't know how they really want it to be. Experienced users typically make heavy modifications, altering the environment so that it works the way they want it to. And I'm sure that some like it to work like Windows does, and that's a perfectly workable option as well.
Finally, I don't hate Windows. I just don't like the way it works, and I can't change it to work the way I want it to. I feel the same way about OS X, though it's more usable (to me) out of the box than Windows is.
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