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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.
I haven't tried Vista yet, but at work I only use Windows 2000. I think it's much faster and even more stable than XP. 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. I bet upgrading to Vista means also a hardware update for most people, so maybe some will switch to an open source alternative.
... and we mustn't have that!
Seriously, I run win2k(sp4) on an old PIII 600 with 128 megs of RAM. It does what I need it to do, if only grudgingly. Why would I "upgrade" to Vista, when I've never had any intention on "upgrading" to XP, which probably would refuse to work with my hardware anyway? (dunno really, haven't checked)
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
Actually, I worked at a school that had many 2000 machines. It had nothing to with paranoid (these guys would have jumped off a cliff if MS asked). It had everything to do with cost, and Microsoft hadn't released anything in the past 7 years that they would find cost-effective.
Hey, Sun Solaris is free these days. If you have used Windows 2000 until now, you have used it for several years now. It's not like your initial investment in the OS hasn't delivered it's return by now. If Solaris is so great, why not just switch to that then?
People using Windows really should accept that they are be paying for it to Microsoft and that they will be paying for it in the future, for upgrades or various subscription based offerings. There are plenty of alternatives if you don't want to accept that.
I joined two users too late.
I was an MSDN Universal subscriber and Windows developer when XP came out, so I had 10 legit XP licenses. But I had no interest in being an early adopter setting a precedent for activation. Nor, now that they don't allow people to take their copy of the OS with them when they upgrade the machine, did I want to further lock myself into system whose costs increase while my freedoms decrease. I suppose I could have planned on piracy, but I have the odd conviction (one apparently not shared by a whole lot of companies) that it's unethical to make money by breaking the rules.
I stayed with Win2k, moved my data away from Office and into open formats (mbox, Open Office), turned my attention towards FOSS development, and finally switched to Mac. Incidentally, the Mac is very pretty, but I would have been fine with W2K's "hideous" look. Apple's no saint; someday I expect I will similarly have to make the shift to Linux.
Paranoid? No. I just want control of my computer and my data, and I don't want my money to encourage schemes like DRM which erode my freedom and that of others.
So why not simply have the installer do the check and then say "Your detected OS is not supported by this software. By installing, you void any official support. Install and run at your own risk! Support questions for this installation will NOT be answered. Continue installation? Y/N"? If someone installs it and gets bitten, they can't claim that they weren't warned. And no one can claim that you're breaking support intentionally to force upgrades. How is this not a win-win situation?
There are plenty of products out there with a limited range of supported platforms (typically Red Hat & SuSE if it runs on Linux) who say up front "We support X, Y, and Z. It should run on anything with a Linux kernel, but don't expect any help from us."
If you look at the economy large scale, it's actually very bad to force upgrades.
Too bad companies are driven by local economy goal, not looking at the big picture.
This is probably one of the major flaws of capitalism.
"The company has fairly strict policies defining when it stops supporting older products. In the case of Windows 2000, the end of what Microsoft calls "mainstream support" came in June 2005."
Since when did MS support any OS? I mean if I report a bug in Windows XP it won't be fixed. MS help desk will just tell me that's a "known issue", or they won't even admit the bug exists. So, basically I have the same level of support in Win 2000 as any other version.
All you need to do is avoid using MS products ( I mean IE, WMP, Messanger, Outlook, etc.) and you can continue to use Windows 2000 without any fear. Security updates will continue for the non-MS versions of those programs.
That said, 2.6 is a pretty old release and we're overdue doing an upgrade on it, but it's inaccurate to say Sun still support it. Added to that, there are a number of Sun Alerts which come out and say that older versions aren't being evaluated for certain bugs.
But Microsoft does, through their announced product lifecycle, promise to deliver security and other fixes for a period of up to 10 years beyond "general availability" (NOT date of license purchase, a nice loophole penalising customers who buy late in the lifecycle). According to that page, Business customers can expect security updates through 2010. Perhaps they don't classify Spyware as a security issue (would explain a lot).
Al Capone put it best. You can get more upgrades bought with flashy launch hype and a gun, than just flashy launch hype.
you had me at #!
90% of computers in the business world don't need anything better then Windows 2000. Heck, Most business computers would be fine running Windows NT. Most PC's in the business world are set up to do basic data entry and retrieval and don't need to do anything else. The Bank teller doesn't need DirectX 10. The call center worker doesn't need an advanced GUI. The Mechanic doesn't need a Quad core CPU. What businesses do need is a reliable long term solution that runs with minimal trouble.
But MS screws the users. As usual. That's what happens when any one company has so much power to abuse. In the absense of real competition the old versions of their own products are just nuisances that prevent them from ramming new garbage down our throats.
Frankly I'm sick and tired of it. I have installed Ubuntu Linux as a cross-boot on many of my machines. Unfortunately, several things are still making it hard for me to abandon Microsoft completely. One of them is actually Microsoft's DRM being used by a website whose content I like (though the website itself reeks like the proverbial big dog's m0e). (Does anyone have a solid connection inside Comedy Central that they're willing to contact?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
And you are shure that's an option they are gonna put there?
I still use Windows 2000, and I like it. MS still provides the updates/service packs, etc, for download. Since they're doing that, I'm a naysayer to the accusation.
Personally I suspect that they are still making enough cash on the current releases that they don't have to resort to petty tricks. IF they wanted to pull the plug on the older O.S.'s then they could probably do a much better job than disabling software.
Anyhow, it's better to be unassuming than to assume they would be dishonest. We really don't don't know what their motive was, and, like them or not, we shouldn't just assume their action was dishonest or that it was done for an insidious reason.
The bottom line is: it's a sin to bear false witniss, even if it's against Microsoft.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
The classic theme in Vista looks horrible, though. Furthermore, using Aero will generally result in better performance, as the rendering is hardware-based, rather than software-based as in the past.
E&S Glaze OpenGL benchmark is about twice as fast on Vista with classic theme, compared to the default Aero. This is on a reasonable dual Opteron system with 4GB memory and Quadro FX560 graphics card (and yes, build 6000 with the currently available NVidia driver).
The first thing I do on Vista is switch to classic (the second being turn off the side bar forever). I wonder if Microsoft have ever heard that their OS is being used by real people to run CAD/CAM applications... not that they want it, but they are forced to.
Will try the same this week with a FireGL card to see if ATI are better.
If Microsoft wants people to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Vista then why doesn't the Vista Upgrade Advisor http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upg radeadvisor/default.mspx
run under Windows 2000?
So? The damn Windows XP is 5 years old. It's not like we're talking about Windows 3.0 here. The differences between 2k and XP, from a programmer's perspective, are frankly minuscule.
Well, yes, actually I'd be quite surprised if it couldn't be run on a TNT2, given that it's famous for being playable on a Voodoo2 (which is a considerably older and less capable card).
It makes perfect business sense for Microsoft to produce versions of their software that requires new hardware or hardware upgrades to get acceptable performance. New hardware generally equals new OEM Microsoft licenses. Think about it. To the average consumer if you've got to upgrade your processor, motherboard, RAM and/or hard drive you might as well buy a new system and that means you're probably going to be paying the Microsoft tax. It's very much in Microsoft's interest to require you to upgrade your hardware to run the latest version of their products. It's no accident and by now no one should be naive enough to chalk it up to bad coding. It's done on purpose and for very sound business rea$ons...
Didn't Microsoft turn OpenGL into a second class citizen in Vista by instead of providing direct-to-the-hardware support for OpenGL they just turned OpenGL into a Direct3D wrapper? I may be wrong on that, but I could've sworn I read about it, like a year ago.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
A customer of mine called and said she was having hell with hotmail using IE6 on W2k..
I went out there and found that they've changed the online Hotmail interface.
It informs you that there is some "new & improved look" to the Hotmail interface.
It hangs up indefinitely but displays a message telling you to click a link if you are
having trouble with the new look. She must click the link for anything at all to happen,
it then gives her a Hotmail screen but informs her that she is now in "reduced functionality mode"
and that not all features will be available.
"But it works on my home computer!" and I query her, "Ah, but I'll bet it's running Windows XP, right?"
"Yes" she tells me.
So I then go to the microsoft site and check for any win2k updates that may help with this.
I find none are available. So then I attempt to track down IE7 for win2k.
Nope. According to the M$ website IE7 is available for windows XP and up.
A few minutes more of research and I find that IE7 will not now nor ever be available for Windows 2000.
Another machine in that office (set to do automatic M$ updates) is running Office 2003. Over the past several months M$ Word has become almost unusable. The woman at that machine opens online email from Yahoo then uses copy & paste, she copies the text from an online message in an IE6 window then tries to paste it into a M$ Word blank document.
Word just hangs up for very long periods, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes Word crashes. Most of the time she just brings up task manager and kills Word then re-tries it over and over until it works.
It always worked fine until about 6 months ago. The copy of Office was pre-installed by Dell.
How much you wanna bet they sabotaged it during an "update" to cause frustration and make the customer seek a solution which of course will be a shiny, brand new package of Office 2007 ?? Eh?? No way to PROVE it, but...
Cha-ching for M$!! There are several win2k machines in that office and they all use Hotmail.
I will guarantee you that over the next 12 months that they will strangle everything else off, slowly.
Win2k and below will be choked off at an insane pace, XP will be choked off a little slower but it will still happen none the less.
I want to also note that the Linux developers are following suit.
I use Suse 10.0 on my primary work horse. I've noticed support and focus has wanned.
Everyone is all gung-ho on 10.2 (which I have no intentions of using) and developers are putting all their effort on the current release. 10.0 has been moved to the back of the bus.
I find that many of the apt repositories have been abandoned or moved and I'm having trouble
with dependencies thus making upgrading a nightmare.
Because of this and the MicroSu$e merger it appears that it's time for me to jump ship and move to
one of the latest ubuntu distros.
M$ isn't the only one pulling this crap off.
The Linux folks do it yearly, M$ does it about every 5 years.
God strike me dead for saying in defense of M$..