Microsoft Squeezes Win2000 Users 404
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.
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe i should downgrade to win2000? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Win2k squeeze (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ease of system administration (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Lazy admins. Boo hoo! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Win2000 rules (Score:4, Informative)
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:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:1, Informative)
It's simple. Save the color for the content or the other important bits (e.g., perhaps control buttons). The rest of the UI can and should be be subdued. It makes the important parts stand out (i.e. the parts you make yourself in the applications). Also, with a more neutral UI palette, you are more likely to visualize the content color correctly, because a brightly-colored UI can skew your perception of color in images.
I'm all for choice in color/themes in UI design. People should be able to choose any color they like. Personally, I'm rather fond of grey, and I think there are good, practical reasons to have it as an option, but it's silly to suggest that's because I'm boring.
Well, okay, I admit it. I usually wear grey. But still!!
Re:It makes perfect business sense (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:2, Informative)
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. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WMP11 is probably the worst offender... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS no longer "supports" win 2000 (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Another problem I've found, (Score:3, Informative)
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.