Slashdot Mirror
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.
Chinnery says he's accepted the fact that he'll have to use the utility to fix his Windows 2000 systems. But, lacking an easily deployable patch, it means he must walk around to tweak each machine in his organization. This is a chore he doesn't feel he should face.
This is what you get for having systems that can be administered using a simple mouseclick by somone with only superficial knowledge of the matter!
Of course it would be simple to automatically install a registry fix on all systems on his network, but he has become so accustomed to every tiny fix being installed in a hundreds of KB executable with automatic installer that he has never learned (or forgotten) how to script such simple things himself.
The daylight saving time mechanism in Windows is broken anyway. Posix DST handling is much better, especially (but not only) when the definition of start and end dates changes.
Hey, I don't know about you, but when I first got XP, practically the first thing I did was change the GUI back to Windows Classic because I didn't want something that looked like it was designed by the Teletubbies.
Vista can have all the oooh and aaaaah it wants in it's GUI, but guess what? When I eventually "upgrade" to it, I'm turning all that crap off.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
From the summary: "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."
I work for a software company - and I suspect many Slashdotters do also, and there are extremely good reasons for this. My company's software dropped support for OSX Panther in our last release, even though in all likelihood there wouldn't be any trouble running it on Panther - we weren't using anything that would specifically be known to break Panther, right?
But one has to realize that to release software on a mass scale involves a lot of QA work. You cannot say "we're not using any XP-only features, so it must work on 2K also!", you have to rigorously test your software on all supported platforms. Failure to do so is irresponsible and unprofessional. This means that, if you wish the drop the overhead of testing in 2K, then you stop supporting 2K, and to prevent consumers from installing your software and then coming back to complain about it (or worse, posting a scathing blog entry about your software's suckitude), you simply block the installation of the software on the older OS.
There's nothing evil about this, this is a simple business decision: you cannot support every legacy OS forever, and as new OS'es get released, your QA load increases. At some point you have to drop support for legacy OS'es, even if they are still technologically compatible with your software.
I still use Win2k. It's not dead for me. Yes, I want to use it. Everything I run works on it. It's on 24/7 with a reboot every 4-5 weeks. I don't play games on the computer so I don't need the latest, greatest thing. I paid for my license, am not a paranoid weirdo and don't have a problem with my computer looking the way it does instead of some Fisher Price/Playskool, created by a two-year old GUI. I have XP on my laptop. It too has the classic look. When the time comes that, what I do can no longer work on Win2k, I'll be moving to Linux. That, however, may be a long time away since I do now what I did in 1993 with my computer, with the exception of videos. I don't need some fancy aero glass to make me feel better. I just need a machine that works. BTW, my car is 6 years old. I bought it brand new. It works flawlessly, with only minor adjustments from time to time. Should I get with the times and throw it out too?
OS'es need to be treated differently for Copyright than other forms of software, simply because maintaining copyright on such a product is unfair to the consumer. If a company drops support for it then they should lose right of control for the future. The public was sold a secure Operating System that can never be secure. Once support is dropped then people should have the right to pursue reverse engineering of the code to support it themselves.
with a decent black theme, XP can look pretty awesome. ;) But of course if your interested in being stuck in your gray, boring world, feel free. ;)
Because, of course, black is far more exciting than grey...?
Look, even Apple has been increasing the grey content of OS X steadily since the very start. Now half the applications are brushed metal, which is, uh, kind of grey. And remember the "graphite" theme they introduced after their graphic artist customer base complained that Aqua was too distracting? You know, the one that turns the entire OS grey?
This "grey is for boring people" thing is getting seriously old. Themes are for people who have nothing better to do than play with themes; "dull" colours like grey (and Ubuntu's beige) are for people who are doing interesting things with their computers, and want the interface to get out of the way when they're not interacting with it. Maybe you spend all your time salivating over your awesomely pretty menus and scrollbars, but some of us are too busy enjoying our interesting and fulfilling work to care what the menus look like.
Most people did.
Windows 2000 was an amazing operating system for its time. As stable as XP, it wasn't as much of a resource hog. It would run quite nicely on 64mb of ram. Yeah, aero looks good in Vista, but when it comes to hardware requirements, it is simply not suitable for many businesses who may have hundreds of computers not quite vista ready. If you like aero and would like to upgrade, that's fine. But locking out w2k users with software that will run fine if not for an explicit OS version check is just unfair. If the software is capable of running on an OS, I expect it to run on that OS. I don't think that is asking too much.
The computer world is in its own accelerated-time parallel universe. Just under 25 years ago (I picked 1983 with the advent of Apple II, Commodore, and Atari) the first wave of new PC's really hit the shelves. The tech types of the time started digging and hacking ... and everyone else was NOT a user at ALL, and called us Nerds. Hollywood noticed.
... Shawn Fanning would be happy to spin them a tune. It was the end of the Alt-Shift-Tab navigation inside of some poorly designed software.
Flash Forward to 1999: With the arrival of Windows 98 as the "semi-stable Win95 service pack", many companies ditched DOS and coaxed their employee armies into being users. Then they discovered that if they could bear to suffer being the Nerd they ridiculed 15 years prior,
It is only EIGHT years after that... and now we are ridiculing users for being passe by using Windows 2000?!
In many other key industries, durability is one of the vital sales points. Anything expected to collapse into unusability gets derided as sloppy, if not a complete outrage. This just proves the computer world is just barely a decade short of maturity. Eventually we'll lose the excitement over milestone OS's, a few standard versions will take hold, and people will settle into the applications they are comfortable with for a long haul.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is what you get for relying on Microsoft for software. Really, anyone should have expected this, and should expect this in the future.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
However, with XP, the OEMs could get away with selling a computer with 256 megs of RAM and a crappy onboard video card. With Vista, this won't suffice. You need good 3D acceleration, and at least 512 megs of RAM, probably more like 1 Gig from what i've read. No more $299 Dell that can actually run the OS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...locking out w2k users with software that will run fine if not for an explicit OS version check is just unfair. If the software is capable of running on an OS, I expect it to run on that OS. I don't think that is asking too much.
Microsoft faces a monumental testing job for every piece of software they release. If they cut an OS from the lsit of supported configurations, that's a heap of testing they can avoid. It also means they don't have to worry about future updates being compatible with Windows 2000. In short, a smaller set of platforms is cheaper to develop for.
And I say this as a Windows 2000 user myself. Sure, I'd rather that MS continued to fully support 2000 until there's a genuinely superior option, but I think there are non-evil business reasons for ending such support.