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.

Comments

Win2000 rules

[LittleImp]

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.

Re:Win2000 rules

[LiquidCoooled]

Its not just vista.

Every recent MS product has just felt *slow*.
Its like outlook and office in general, the interface looks nice and logical, but it has lost its snappiness.
Actions involving a full page refresh appear like a web page.
Clicking between folders in Outlook leaves the old mail on screen briefly and things just aren't better.

I was evaluating visual studio .net again this week and whilst it might technically do everything it needs to, its slower than VS 6 at most things.
My colleagues think I should live on oldversion.com, but I just don't like the direction MS has taken.

Re:Win2000 rules

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with the Visual Studio line of products is that it is sometimes far too time consuming to set compile options, add paths for includes, etc., and some of the ways of adding or setting things are inconsistent between parts of the toolset (although this is much improved in .NET) or with the way things are done in other Microsoft tools. The majority of development work I do is on unix or unix-like systems so having to remember the little idiosyncracies of Visual Studio can be a pain, and these days I prefer to simply access the compiler via eclipse and ant, which is a shame as I can appreciate that there is quite a lot of power in the Visual Studio IDE I am failing to use because of the annoyance of accessing it.

This having been said Linux tools very often have their own idiosyncratic ways of doing things with differences between tools that are KDE/Gnome/Qt/Gtk, and inconsistencies between tools that are all based on just KDE.

Re:Win2000 rules

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:Win2000 rules

[Annymouse Cowherd]

Strange, Win2K has jumped at every opportunity to BSOD me, while XP doesnt.

Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000 is rarely used anymore. Get with the times. It's going to be 2007, that'll make it 7 years old. Besides, its GUI is hideous compared to Vista's Aero goodness. Does anybody really want to use an OS that looks like Win95? Furthermore, the only people still stuck on Windows 2000 are paranoid weirdos afraid of Microsoft activation and are probably stealing their licenses anyway.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Grimbleton]

So how tight is the foil on YOUR head?

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Kierthos]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[rubicon7]

Does anybody really want to use an OS that looks like Win95? I said it in 1995, and I'll say it again now: NO.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[a.d.trick]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[berberine]

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?

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[edwardpickman]

You'll pry my copy of Win 2000 out of my cold dead hands.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Rick17JJ]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[nacturation]

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. KDE, Gnome, and others have been working hard to replicate your Fischer Price/Playskool created-by-a-two-year-old GUI. So should you find yourself wanting to use Linux, you'll be right at home.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[tilandal]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[kubevubin]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[DrSkwid]

I'm not sure they'd wait for you to go cold.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[ci4]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Silver Sloth]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Haeleth]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[sbben]

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
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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[UnderDark]

I don't know about you or the GP, but mine is always at, or greater than, 250 psi.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Directrix1]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[The Warlock]

This is what you get for relying on Microsoft for software. Really, anyone should have expected this, and should expect this in the future.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[skeeterbug]

But locking out w2k users with software that will run fine if not for an explicit OS version check is just unfair.

*exactly* what ever gave you the impression that msft factored in "fair" when they made a decision about their software? *all* they care about is getting your money and they will do anything underhanded they can to extract every last turnip dollar you can give them. asking msft to consider "fair" is like asking a hungry bear to consider the parents of that salmon they are about to eat. hasn't msft made this patently obvious for, say 15 years or so?

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.

you have three choices. shut up and PAY msft, keep complaining and pay msft (primarily to figure out new ways to force you to pay them more) or find an alternative. make no mistake, with a little work and alternative exists.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Kenshin]

Most people did.

Who are these "most people"?

Only one person I know changed the XP interface back to Classic, and he's a cranky fellow.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[ConceptJunkie]

You're right, and since Windows 2000 was the point where functionality, usability and stability (if not security) for an MS operating system all came together, it would have been nice if somehow they could have stuck with that as a base and maybe today we'd be running Windows 2000 SP9, and it would be solid, stable, much more secure and still run in 64MB of memory. From a user's point of view, the only "can't live without it" features since Windows 2000 have been support for newer hardware. Sure there have been other improvements, but when I use Windows 2000, aside of a couple small GUI enhancements in Explorer, there's really nothing I miss.

Microsoft's biggest problem is that their best competition is their older versions. They have to expand their monopoly to also be against themselves.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Guppy06]

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[swillden]

I find that one of the most hilarious things about Linux. They all hate or don't like Windows but they make their OS look 90% the same as it.

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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[RAMMS EIN]

``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.''

Welcome to the wonderful world of proprietary software, where the corporation decides what software you can run and under what conditions.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[ci4]

You didn't read well enough, AC - it is the NVidia ICD 96.85 with full acceleration - with all tweaks I know to speed it up. It's just that Aero takes way too much, and being only superficial decoration level, doesn't deserve anything else other than switching off. It *may* be once NVidia releases properly optimized Vista drivers, taking into account that, somehow limiting what goes into Aero at driver level, the remainig will be enough for normal OpenGL work, but not yet.

The standard Microsoft WDM NVidia driver is unusable for OpenGL applications. It's as good as software acceleration.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[ScrewMaster]

And really, since 2D acceleration became widely available oh, some fifteen years ago it's all been done using hardware anyway. Modern chipsets do font rendering in hardware, even. The only difference in Aero is that it's using 3D acceleration.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Lagged2Death]

...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.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Goaway]

Themes are for people who think ";)" is punctuation.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Anonymous Cowled]

> I don't know about you or the GP, but mine is always at, or greater than, 250 psi.

Whoa, dude - slacken that off a bit - If it's too tight to your head, it just works as a transmitter!!

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Duds]

It happens to be fine yes.

But what if something obscure in the program happens to not work. If they say it works on 2000 they'd have to support it. This isn't MS screwing anyone, this is just common sense.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Tony Hoyle]

We've been using carriage returns for what, the past 15 years? Its getting abit old.

Ease of system administration

[pe1chl]

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.

Re:Ease of system administration

[jimicus]

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!

I disagree. My take is "this is what you get for hiring people who believe that the correct way to fix a large number of systems is to click "next next next" on every one of those systems like a trained chimpanzee". What are such people doing in IT anyhow? The whole point of computers is to make repetitive tasks quick and easy, why are you giving yourself a repetitive task?

At a previous employer, we had about 800-1,000 people using a mix of NT4 and 2K on the desktop. Didn't bother us. When it was necessary to do something to a whole bunch of machines, we scripted it with a batch file and pstools (google for it - I'm too lazy to provide a link). Worked a treat. You'd be amazed (and probably faintly disturbed) at what can be done in a batch file if you're bloody minded enough. It's possible (though not much fun) to simulate grep with a for loop.

Now I'm the IT manager. One of my interview questions is "How do you install software on one desktop? OK, now how do you install software on 100 desktops?". Anyone who hasn't got the wherewithall to think that it must be scriptable is not someone I wish to hire.

Cut the BS

[p0tat03]

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.

Re:Cut the BS

[alexhs]

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, you simply block the installation of the software on the older OS. What's wrong with only showing a dialog box ?

Lots of programs in the win9x era would show a dialog box at installation when you tried to install them on a winnt system : Might not work, unsupported...
Then, it's the user responsability to choose.

Re:Cut the BS

[The Master Control P]

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."

Re:Cut the BS

[p0tat03]

Evil? Not in the best interest of legacy OS users for sure, but evil? Where in blue blazes do you get off on calling that evil?

Get off the high horse and realize that just because we refuse to support your usage of an ancient OS, and we refuse to spend millions in man-hours QA'ing for it when you represent an infinitesimal portion of our customer base, doesn't mean we're evil. For cryin' out loud the damn thing is 7 years old! You don't expect Doom 3 to run on your Nvidia TNT2 do you?

Re:Cut the BS

[p0tat03]

Another poster below you also pointed out the same strategy. It is a valid notion, I admit, but considering our software is targeted at average users who may not be technically inclined, I believe ours is the right decision. I believe you are grossly underestimating the intelligence, or dare I suggest, honesty of the average software user.

If you give them the option to install, they will ignore any and all warnings and call you anyway when they run into problems. Worse yet, they will fly off the hook and begin slandering your software to anyone who will listen, and you bet your ass that their version of the story won't contain the fact that they're running on an unsupported OS.

Some won't even understand what the warning means, or some won't even read it - the "OK" button is just too large and tempting to click.

The install/runtime check is more of a preventative motion than anything else. We don't want to present a negative image of our product when know-nothing users decide to run it on unsupported hardware/software and get stuck. We don't want support calls related to this - even listening to them long enough to kick them off the line costs us valuable dollars and cents. We want nothing to do with this possibility - and the number of honest consumers who will legitimately accept the lack of support and run it on an old OS is small enough that we really don't want to open ourselves to that risk. Honestly, if there were a significant number of people still using the OS, we wouldn't drop support for it.

Disclaimer: The above is a personal opinion and in no way represents the views of my employer.

Re:Cut the BS

[Mister Transistor]

Sounds good, but the luser on the tech support line won't know the tech that installed it checked "OK" when it was installed. When that luser happens to be a corporate VP, then the fun starts.

What might work in the shop adequately may not be robust enough for general use. We take OS faults in stride...

Back on topic, I've suspected artificial version lockout on many occasions, stuff that will install on XP but not 2K, even though they are almost identical "under the hood". Seems especially common on high end A/V editing/processing programs. I'm interested that TFA pointed to the Orca editor, that sounds like an quickie way to see just how many of these programs will _actually_ run under win2k.

Re:Cut the BS

[Haeleth]

Get off the high horse and realize that just because we refuse to support your usage of an ancient OS, and we refuse to spend millions in man-hours QA'ing for it when you represent an infinitesimal portion of our customer base, doesn't mean we're evil.

If the number of users of the ancient OS is that infinitesimally small, then even if it's broken you'll only get a handful of support calls. Force people to jump through a little hoop to install the program, like running the installer with a special "/skiposcheck" switch, and inexperienced users who don't understand the meaning of "at your own risk" won't be able to install it anyway. Thirty seconds' work, with the result that nobody bitches that you blocked them using your software for no reason. But I guess it's easier to get on a patronising high horse of your own than to recognise that not all your potential users are still wearing nappies.

For cryin' out loud the damn thing is 7 years old!

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.

You don't expect Doom 3 to run on your Nvidia TNT2 do you?

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).

Windows 2000 works *reasonably* well for me ...

[rubicon7]

... 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)

Re:Windows 2000 works *reasonably* well for me ...

[Threni]

You think Linux distros are going to be supported indefinitely? If you want to do it yourself, fine. But that's only the same as what happens to old Windows OSs. I mean, there are some businesses using MSDOS on 286s. If it works for you, fine. Don't keep up. But don't kid yourself that MS is evil because they don't want to waste money on legacy nonsense.

Switch to Solaris then

[kerubi]

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.

Re:Pretty obvious..

[Aladrin]

"How do you know the product works perfectly on Win2000? Just cause it looks like it doesn't mean it does..."

I think this is the REAL issue here. Microsoft didn't know for sure it worked on win2k, and this guy doesn't either. He hasn't rigourously tested it in any fashion. He just installs it, runs it a few times and proclaims 'Hey, it works!'.

When an app IS supported, it can have major issues. Unsupported has got to be a lot more risky. If your whole point of running win2k is the stability, running unsupported apps seems... insane.

I walked away from Activation

[Geof]

the only people still stuck on Windows 2000 are paranoid weirdos afraid of Microsoft activation and are probably stealing their licenses anyway

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.

MS no longer "supports" win 2000

[edxwelch]

"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.

Re:MS no longer "supports" win 2000

[dwlovell]

Your assertion that MS will not fix bugs you report is not correct. I worked for Microsoft in the IE Sustained Engineering group and I can tell you that many, many people are devoted to QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) work as their primary job. Where do you think the fixes in "Service Pack x" come from? Its all the individual fixes that companies and individuals reported over a certain period of time. They even take all the crashes reported electronically by Error Reporting (used to be called "Dr. Watson") and put them into buckets. Whichever buckets are at the top of the list every month, those get fixed and get included in the next SP as well. Obviously critical security bugs get released more often than the non-critical fixes that are rolled into a SP.

Just because *you* reported a bug that did not get fixed, does not mean they don't fix bugs that the general public report to them.

What so many people fail to understand is that some bugs cannot be easily fixed because third-party developers have already become dependent on working around the flawed behavior. Since almost all Microsoft products are themselves applications platforms, they would be screwing the developers who wrote their own applications around the bugged behavior. So Microsoft always walks a tightrope of fixing issues without damaging existing customer's experience, both end users and internal applications written for large corporations paying for support contracts. Generally if there is a known issue with a certain product and Microsoft chooses not to fix it, it is for a good reason, not because they don't care about your experience. I think Mozilla developers are starting to experience the same problems. Initially when they had virtually nil userbase, it was easy to be agile and fix bugs. Now that they have market share, it will be difficult to break established behavior, even if it is incorrect.

No matter what decision MS ever makes, they will get bashed for it. If they release a fix that breaks existing behavior, its labeled as "Gee, MS can't fix a bug without breaking stuff!!", if they decide not to fix it because they know it will break existing behavior, the decisions is labeled "Gee, MS is totally ignoring this bug!". In reality, a bunch of people sat in a room and fought for both sides of the argument and came to a decision that they felt was best for everyone.

-David

Solaris 2.6 support?

[larien]

Hrm, article is inaccurate:

(Sun) is actually still supporting users of version 2.6. ... the operating system is fully supported through 2007

Not according to Sun's own website where support ended in July. We've actually called up Sun and they refused the call because 2.6 was out of support.

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.

The Boston Globe

[telchine]

I phone up the Boston Globe and asked for their advice. they said I should "stop using Windows 2000"

Man, those guys are good!

So much for the charitable theory

[toby]

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 love me, you really love me !

[Joebert]

When my mom squeezes me, it means she loves me.
I think that's why Microsoft does it too.
I still haven't figured out why Uncle Tom squeezes me though. :/

Self-competition! It's *SO* nice. For MS.

[shanen]

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?)

Re:Self-competition! It's *SO* nice. For MS.

[plasmacutter]

That's what happens when any one company has so much power to abuse. In the absense of real competition

The irony is that in the US.. and it literally would be any one. Just take out your local financial section and throw a dart at the page.. yep.. that one's got it's greasy bribing hooks in the government too.

The antitrust law here is kind of like the bill of rights, an antiquated and curious roll of vintage toilet paper.

It's a sin to bear false witniss.

[the_REAL_sam]

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.

Article should be entitled...

[QuietLagoon]

How Microsoft is pushing Windows 2000 users to use a non-Windows operating system.

Another windows 2k user here

[Sleeping Kirby]

I've been offered free windows XP licenses. I've thought about getting a free windows vista license (it's nice to have friends), but you know what? I just don't feel it's worth it. Right now, I have two computers sitting side by side. One needs to be turned off every couple of days or so or the performance suffers. That said machine also can do a total of 1 thing better (to my knowledge) than the other that machine also makes my life harder when I need to go change the security settings on. It also insists that everything .jpg or .bmp file I view should be in thumbnail mode rather than the lovely detail mode that actually tells me something useful about the file.

What it really comes down to is that I like Windows 2000 and still prefer it to XP and Vista. I don't feel MS is in the wrong to not support and I understand the business decision not to support 2k, but it's not like they ever supported it much so I won't be missing it much. They'll still support xp because it's newer and (sarcasm) so much different from 2k os-wise(/sarcasm) than xp. And I'm looking into Linux as my next os because I don't feel that your OS should require 2 gigs of ram minimum just to run. Oh yeah, there's also the drm root-kit--erhm I mean, drm system put on vista for our protection (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). Because, after all, we only own something if some large media organization say we do.

Yeah, I know this will be flamed at by someone using 1 or more of the 3 following points:
1) You should just shut up!
2) MS is right in what they're doing and they're always right. (insert ritualistic bowing to a bill gates statue here)
3) You're a stupid windows user and you're stuck there because you're stupid.

To which I'll reply with, by that argument so should you, yeah, they're right in not supporting it, I've already stated that and if FFXI can run on Linux, I'd have be there a long time ago.

Vista Upgrade Advisor

[almclean]

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?

Re:Maybe i should downgrade to win2000?

[riscthis]

cause the windows updater is driving me crazy with microsoft's anti spyware product. i'm not interested in it, so when i tell to the updater not to install it, and to never ask it again, it'll soon ask me to install the version of the month before, if i disable that one, next month, etc.... i HATE that thing already (and haven't even installed it yet)

Do you mean the Malicious Software Removal Tool? That also gets delivered on Windows 2000, IIRC. It will run exactly once after install, and check for a number of common pieces of malware. It's not really an anti-spyware product as such, just a tool for cleaning up some of the more common pieces of malware users may have installed. It does not remain resident.

Re:Win2k squeeze

[riscthis]

Kind of amusing considering that XP is, primarily, a cosmetic upgrade of the shell, plus a few minor changes to drivers. The kernel itself is even only a minor version # change from that of 2k's.

Are these changes also minor? http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/XPK ernel/ (and that article refers to the RTM version of Windows XP, so doesn't even touch on the changes introduced in XP SP2)

Abandonware status for OS'es once dropped

[MadRat]

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.

This is very interesting...

[Monoliath]

I'm having a great time watching Microsoft self-destruct.

It seems as if they've forgotten who they work for?

Do they really believe that users will continue to take this incredibly shoddy treatment?

It is becoming incredibly obvious to me that Microsoft is trying to leverage their monopoly worse than ever before, with products and the general attitude of the software design towards the user such as Vista.

Then again, what more can you expect from a company who has pretty much 'stolen' their way to the top? The new breed of technologists are True innovators at heart, Microsoft is Marketing Machine now, I think our favorite chair-tossing potty mouth summed it up best with this little clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTkA9L2J2gY - Advertisers, advertisers, advertisers

The more thought I give to Microsoft as a company and it's history, it almost seems as if they were better at business strategy from the beginning than they were at software design, not saying that their software was crap, but it's just the 'flavor' I get. Microsoft never made 'superior' products per say, they just made sure to 'exterminate' or 'assimilate' all existing market players before joining the game. The problem with that is, you can make bullshit and it might seem great...when there's nothing else to compare it to, but now that other options are becoming viable and user-friendly, Microsoft seems to be 'wigging out', because now they actually are beginning to have 'real' competition.

Microsoft made good products (except for Windows ME / Windows XP) right up to the Server 2003 family, everything after that has been candy-coated advertising primed nonsense, including Windows XP. Microsoft's goal is no longer to engineer high quality, functional operating systems and software, but to engineer mediocre quality operating systems and wares that are designed to give advertisers prime access to your eyes, if they pay Microsoft the right price.

To sum it up? They sold out...like really soul-ed out.

But that's ok...

My associates have been researching alternate OS routes and there are many promising options on the horizon. It's all a part of the developing market of software design, it will be interesting to see how the beast we know as Microsoft will mature as time goes on, or if they will crash and burn.

I will not buy Office 2007, I will not buy Vista and I will encourage all of my clients and co-workers to do the same for the stated reasons above. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Vista is going to teach Microsoft a hard lesson, or hang them in my humble opinion.

It makes perfect business sense

[Luscious868]

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...

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[Random Destruction]

If microsoft is going out of their way to make everything slow, then why isn't linux SIGNIFICANTLY faster?

Not a troll, I only run linux and hate windows, but I dont see the logic in your statement.

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[The Warlock]

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.

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[The Warlock]

Have you ever actually used XFCE?

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[newt0311]

Use XFCE or IceWM or Fluxbox, instead. Add FVWM2 to that list.

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[CastrTroy]

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.

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[inode_buddha]

"If microsoft is going out of their way to make everything slow, then why isn't linux SIGNIFICANTLY faster?"

It is. This 4-year-old P3 (Fedora Core 6) box is easily keeping up with my dad's brand-new Dell/XP setup. Both boxes are fully loaded with *everything*, both hardware and software. If I want to make it really snappy, I can do some re-compiling and just install only the stuff I use. I doubt that most MS users can say that.

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[Thomas the Doubter]

I concur tha linux IS significantly faster. I use both linux and XP, and even up-to-date linux distributions such as Xandros 4.0 and RHL 4.1 perform very well with a 1.2 GHZ Pentim3 and 256MB of memory, while XP is a slug on such a box. Vista promises to nothing at all on this hardware.

As for the comments that the user interface on Linux is not based upon user experience - I find I am coming to prefer the Linux desktop (both Gnome and KDE), because I have much more control, especially the fonts. It is also nice to have multiple desktops, one for each of several different task-groupings, for instance one for internet-related activities, one for Word-processing related activities, one for Graphics, and so forth. This eliminates the ugly and confusing icon-clutter seen on most users MS desktops.
Thomas

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[Spikeles]

I think you are pointing at the wrong thing here when you talk about GUI. The windowing system merely provides.. as it's name suggests.. the windowing control, eg, minimize, maximize, restore, copy/paste between windows, a start bar. But the windowing system isn't really the biggest performance bottleneck in the disto. The Widget toolset is, such as GTK(gnome), QT(kde), Motif, etc. They are the most resource intensive and a 1sec delay in the button drawing code will make your GUI experience crawl.

As for the general slowdown in most newer user apps, i blame the increasing usage of interpreted byte code languages such as .NET and C#(mono) and Java. Alot of newer Microsoft code links with .NET assemblies to make their work easier.. but it usually results in slower more memory hogging applications. I also blame the publishers for not giving the developers time to optimize the program, "Oh don't worry that it takes up 512MB of RAM, we'll just increase the minimum requirements!"

Re:It makes perfect business sense

[Spikeles]

I know about JIT, and if you did, you'd also know that your statement isn't quite true. It is almost never compiled prior to the FIRST execution, usually it has to run though the same code about 2000+ times before it gets compiled. Before those 2000 times are up though it is running as byte code ( which is the whole point of the HotSpot compiler). I played with the Java VM flags once and told it to compile every method on it's first run and you know what happened? It sat there for 5minutes compiling before it even brought up the main window. Every Java program you run is being run as mixed byte-interpreted and JIT compiled code. As for .NET i must confess that i don't have much experience with it and was just blindly comparing it with Java, i'll go do some more research before i make such comments again.

Lazy admins. Boo hoo!

[operagost]

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.

While I don't understand why MS did not release the patch for an OS that is supposedly still under support, this guy is either lazy or ignorant. Not only does regedit work remotely, but he can also put the TZ changes into a reg file, which is just text, and kick off a remote script to apply it on each of his servers.

Re: Evolution of the OrdinaryUser(OU)

[TaoPhoenix]

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.

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, ... 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.

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.

Another problem I've found,

[pair-a-noyd]

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$..

Re:Another problem I've found,

[GaryPatterson]

"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."

I've found that any online document with even trivial formatting will cause Word to spend ages working out how to format it. I've seen some weird and complex table structures come out of fairly simple html documents.

My solution is to paste into Notepad, then paste the resulting text into Word. It's an extra step, but Notepad won't take no guff from IE (!) and passes only nice, clean text to Word. It usually requires a little formatting afterwards in Word to get headers, bold text, etc, but that's not so bad.

Erm well of course the new version feels slower.

[goldcd]

Creating software is balancing the requirements that you want to provide against what the abilities of the machine it's going to be put on.
So new version of software expects it'll be installed on faster machine than the last one, so they can shove more features in.
So if I run new version and old version on the same machine, the new version will appear to be slower. Over time you'll PC will get faster and faster and the 'new' product will appear to get snappier and snappier - until the next new version of the software comes out and you'll complain it's slowed down again.
The point of PCs getting faster is now solely so you can run your old apps faster, it's to allow you to use new apps.

Re:WMP11 is probably the worst offender...

[Zantetsuken]

try vlc-player, also, ffdshow also helps (I can't remember if ffdshow is packaged into vlc, and if it's not it can be used seperately with other media players)