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.
Ease of system administration (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Cut the BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cut the BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Pretty obvious.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cut the BS (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Windows 2000 works *reasonably* well for me ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cut the BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
And somebody asked why MS is hated the other day (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Self-competition! It's *SO* nice. For MS. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Another windows 2k user here (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cut the BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Abandonware status for OS'es once dropped (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is very interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [youtube.com] - 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.
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
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: Evolution of the OrdinaryUser(OU) (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It makes perfect business sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
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:It makes perfect business sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to the wonderful world of proprietary software, where the corporation decides what software you can run and under what conditions.
Erm well of course the new version feels slower. (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:It makes perfect business sense (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the general slowdown in most newer user apps, i blame the increasing usage of interpreted byte code languages such as
Re:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.