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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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.

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.

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."

Forcing upgrades is bad for the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

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 [sun.com] 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.

So much for the charitable theory

[toby]

But Microsoft does, through their announced product lifecycle, [microsoft.com] 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.

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.

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:Netcraft confirms it: Windows 2000 is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are shure that's an option they are gonna put there?

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.

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's time to be cut off (I'm running win2k on a PIII 450 with 256MB of RAM, and it works fine for plenty of tasks, especially office type tasks). I don't expect support forever, and MS has done a fair job supporting it this long. But MS should realize some people / companies could take the load off Microsoft's HUGE shoulders and fix things themselves. I suspect some third party could even make money by offering support for win2k.

Maybe, now that it's unsupported or soon to be, Microsoft could release the source code to win2k so that someone else could do the job they do not want to do?

HAHAHAHA! Just kidding.

Seriously, though. The ability to have indefinite support -- via digging into the source and fixing it oneself -- is one of the advantages of open-source solutions. Yeah, that doesn't make fixing things easy, but it would be 10x easier than trying to fix a similar problems in, say, a proprietary and abandoned win2k system, where you are at the mercy of the vendor's economic interest in pushing people to newer products. Should I need a supported operating system for my old clunker, I could install one, but probably not from MS, because there isn't enough money to be made from people who would like to keep using an old machine for as long as it is useful. I have higher-end machines too, but I don't see the point of decommissioning a perfectly functional machine just because a vendor thinks it is time to move on.

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 [microsoft.com] run under Windows 2000?

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).

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: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: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:Win2000 rules

[Annymouse Cowherd]

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

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: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 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.