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Windows Operating Systems Software IT

Microsoft's Most Successful Failure 354

Posted by Zonk from the win-some-lose-some dept.
m4dm4n writes "As we near the end of mainstream support of Win2k The Register looks back at what it has achieved. What was meant to be Microsoft's most secure OS ever turned into a disaster. Worm after worm changed the face of internet security in Win2k's first 2 years. Five years down the line the battle is far from won, but the improvements are dramatic." From the article: "Things were different in the year 2000. Programmers felt vindicated that the Y2K bug didn't turn out to be that big of a deal. We made it past January 1st, and then it was time to move on. Windows 2000 came out that first quarter, just as security was becoming more interesting to more people -- and Windows was a good place to start. It was also seemed to be the start of a new breed of Windows hackers."
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Microsoft's Most Successful Failure More

Microsoft's Most Successful Failure

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  • Learning Experience (Score:4, Insightful)

    by strongmace ( 890237 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:39PM (#12750640)
    If only I could make as much money from my mistakes as Microsoft does from its learning experiences.
    • If only I could make as much money from my mistakes as Microsoft does from its learning experiences.

      Get yourself a job in government.
    • Lessons Microsoft learned, paraphrassing the article.
      • Win2K security originally sucked but many people spent money on it anyway. Time to Market is more important than security to the corporate world.
      • Longhorn is late, and has had almost all the features removed - this sucks from a profit point of view, and Microsoft stock is nowhere near their heights.
      • Various service packs fixed most all the secuirty holes in Win2000, and now it's hard to get people to upgrade to Longhorn. Upgrade revenue was easier

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) *
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • All companies - not just software and not just OS companies - need to strike a balance between security and other business pressures that may have conflicts including time-to-market and end-user convenience.

          Credit card companies manage it well -- it's not too hard to steal a credit card - but it's not too hard to use them either. They balance these decisions very carefully.

          Car companies also balance many things against security in their products - including fuel economy (heavier cars are safer) and c

  • say what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by msh104 ( 620136 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:40PM (#12750642)
    but atleast it didn't took me 4 years to get my printer up and running... all in all I am very happy with linux, but why does it always have to be win=bad lin=good everywhere.

    • Re:say what you want... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KoReE ( 4358 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:50PM (#12750762) Homepage
      It's because of Star Wars. Everyone wants a guy with a red lightsaber, and a guy with a blue lightsaber. Gates has been handed the red one, and Linus the blue one. It's really quite dumb.

      I'm a big fan of the "best tool for the job". I like Windows for a desktop, Linux for a server environment...but Windows server environment is improving. I still think it sucks, but it's improving....

      • Re:say what you want... (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        On this website, I read posts by quite a few people complaining about GNU/Linux bias. Doesn't that mean there are enough of the so-called "non-biased" readers that your complaints are almost null and void? Maybe we need some real statistics here?

        Are you a biased pro-GNU/Linux reader?
        A. Yes.
        B. No.
        C. I'm a troll.
      • Linux for a desktop is improving, too... it's just called Mac OS.

        [Now, where's that fire extinguisher...?]
      • Wait... So Apple gets the multicolored fruity lightsaber? Where does that put them in the spectrum :|
      • I'm a big fan of the "best tool for the job".

        So am I, and I think the best tool for both desktop and server at this point is something in the UNIX family (Linux, BSD, etc.) with one of the X11-based desktops (Gnome, KDE, etc.).

        The NT kernel is just a bloated design (and an even worse implementation).

        There is one thing Microsoft has done well recently: C#, a Java derivative that fixes many of the most annoying problems of Java. Unfortunately, they are spoiling it with the same kind of poor library desig
      • You're being way to sensible about this -- you're bound to be flamed.

        Rumor has it that Linux makes a hell of a good server platform, but all my experience with it has so far been desktop, and it just doesn't cut it at that level. I know all the rationales, but the real bottom line is this: I want a desktop to be as polished and elegant and quick as possible. Windows does that.

        And when the time comes that I need a rock-solid server that just sits there and does its thing, with no need for a fancy desktop

  • 2k was excellent except for one thing.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zanderredux ( 564003 ) * on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:40PM (#12750645)
    ... IIS and those stupid ActiveX controls that bridged Office docs into a web page.

    Users (including the usual PHBs) got used to that paradigm and now do not value a proper web server setup!

    And people think something does not work when a link points to "C:\Dave\Projects\budget.xls" does not work on their computers!

    • Re:2k was excellent except for one thing.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:50PM (#12750750) Homepage Journal
      A slightly off-topic comment, that I feel I have to make to someone somewhere...

      My boss and I were talking a week or so back, and we were talking about taking a bunch of our libraries and somehow making them into something we can use everywhere. Now realize that we, unfortunatly, have about 200 applications to maintain, across Visual Basic, Delphi, Java, C++ in many flavors (Borland and MS are the majority) and a slew of other crap, including some VB scripts.

      Now, obviously, a plain DLL isn't going to cut it... VB would be a pain in the arse to translate all of the declares to, and Java would need something similar to use a native library.

      This IS where ActiveX control/libraries come in. And thanks to even automation, I can EVEN use said libraries in the windows scripts via a magical CreateObject.

      The nightmare of using ActiveX controls on a webpage shouldnt blur the actual usefulness of the technology possibly elsewhere.

      • Re:2k was excellent except for one thing.... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by metlin ( 258108 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:23PM (#12751140) Journal
        I agree.

        Most people who bash ActiveX controls haven't really been in enterprise development environments where they have used them.

        While their security aspect is a bad thing, they're quite useful in their own way.
        • :] reminded me of something. About 7 or 8 years ago I was doing a project for Danli Promotions (I was working at Davinci at the time,) and had to develop a method for the business operators to create new product catalogs. This involved setting up new products in the first place to use them in the catalogs. So the requirement was to allow an image attachment to the product description and for some reason the client wanted to be able to paste the picture into the browser from the clipboard. So I tried Ja
        • While their security aspect is a bad thing, they're quite useful in their own way.

          The same can be said about almost every Microsoft product/technology/implementation.

          Microsoft focuses on functionality even when it means making something completely insecure.

          So, it all comes down to which do you value more, functionality or security?
      • That's because COM specifies a binary level interface. It's language (and supposedly platform) neutral. It's nothing like as complicated as CORBA tried to be, but in it's simplicity, it works well. Of course, some languages (e.g. C & C++) can get quite ugly when dealing with COM. Also, as more implementations have started working with custom interfaces, we can get away from the pain of IDispatch (still the only choice with web page scripts IIRC though).

  • MetaEditing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021&bc90021,net> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:41PM (#12750661) Homepage
    So we've got a Slashdot palgiarism of two paragraphs of a Security Focus story that was posted on The Register. Is this like "meta-editing" or something?

  • Failure -- A bit harsh? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Blahbooboo3 ( 874492 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:42PM (#12750673)
    I won't make an arguement about security problems in Win2k, since the article is correct. However, I will say that I think Windows 2000 is the best MS OS to yet come out. The GUI is far better then XP (IMHO), has support for all the latest "bells and whistles", and it is FASTER than the equivalent XP machine.
    • I agree.. I'm extremely disapointed to see support for W2K going away as it's the O/S I run on my laptop, at home, and that we use here at work... it's fast sleek, and doesn't hog resources like XP... oh well.. here we come linux.

      • Re:Failure -- A bit harsh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by zbuffered ( 125292 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:14PM (#12751709)
        Turn off the Themes service, Automatic Updates service, Error Reporting service, Help and Support service, Windows Firewall... Pretty soon you'll be getting near win2k memory loads, and your XP box will look pretty good. I once would have agreed with you -- I resisted the 2000 -> XP conversion for quite some time, but I have adequate resources and XP runs like a champ for me.

    • Re:Failure -- A bit harsh? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Geez, you call yourself a geek and you don't even know how to revert to the windows classic theme?

      A properly configured windows XP box is also probably faster than a properly configured Win2k box. Especially WinXP64.
    • It's not faster than XP. Turn off all the graphical bullshit so that XP looks like Win2k and it'll run as fast as Win2k.
    • And why 2K's gui is far better than XP's? have you got any real argument or you are pissed off by having more than 2 colours on your screen?
    • While I agree that for the general home user, Win 2000 is probably a better option, you can indeed turn off those options in Win XP, and it runs just as fast.

      And XP does have some really good features for the power user.
      • What does XP have as a power feature that 2000 doesn't?

        XP scripting is worse. I used to have a script for my mother in-law to insert her memory stick in the reader and click an icon for the image processing to happen.
        The processing I had is that images would be moved from the media into a backup location and a working location and resized via ImageMagick into an Email directory.
        XP considers the script malicious now so now she has to manually process the photos.

        The only one I can thnk of is auto complete
    • I agree entirely.

      Most of our computers at the office that still run Microsoft systems are running Windoze 2000. The rest run Linux, OpenBSD, and OSX.

      We have one single purpose Windoze 98 still running and the only reason we haven't changed it to 2000 is because the distribution for the single software package it runs is long gone.

      And we have two Windoze NT machines. I'd like to get rid of both of them, but can't.

      Accounting has a single Windoze XP machine.

      The remaining Windoze machines are Windoze 200
    • has support for all the latest "bells and whistles", and it is FASTER than the equivalent XP machine. Where's my ConnectEx then?

  • Pardon me, but weren't most of the worm issues in (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Assmasher ( 456699 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:43PM (#12750684) Journal
    ...2000-2003 the fault of applications which happened to run on 2000? I'm not too familiar with 'OS worms'... IIS and SQL worms, oh yeah, lots of those; but, those aren't Windows 2000.

    • Re:Pardon me, but weren't most of the worm issues (Score:5, Informative)

      by OhPlz ( 168413 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:47PM (#12750726)
      IIS and the repeatedly exploited index server were distributed with Win2000. The RPC port exploit was also a Win2000 issue.

      I think it's a shame that they're twilighting the support for the OS. I still use it and have no real reason to upgrade to XP. I tend to wonder if the only "big deal" with XP is that it included a software firewall.
      • SQL Server is distributed with VS.Net but I don't consider it part of .Net ;)... I did forget about the MSBlast though.
      • XP is actually significantly more than just 2000 with a firewall, especially when you consider SP2. It's worth the upgrade to XP SP2 for the browser security improvements alone (though you shouldn't have to upgrade to get them.. but that doesn't change the fact that you DO have to upgrade to get them).

        Things in XP that I use every day and would go nuts not having if I went back to 2K.

        * Tray Icon Hiding. Too many apps put icons on the tray and it's very nice to get rid of them.

        * The new Start menu. I c
      • "I think it's a shame that they're twilighting the support for the OS. I still use it and have no real reason to upgrade to XP."

        I feel the same. It is hard to believe I am going to have to shell out hard cash to replace an OS that meets all my needs because it will no longer be updated. What is worse is that I do not want / need to run XP. I have never really liked it. I bought one copy and within a few weeks reinstalled Win 2K. I guess this is one more reason to switch to Linux.

  • without buffer overruns.

    Obviously they are caused by irresponsible programing, but just imagine if the nature of the stack wouldn't allow them. If some kind of mechanism beside a simple jump had been used. Like registering an address in the CPU via an instruction and then calling that jump. Would we have had half the problems?

    • Re:where would we be.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:10PM (#12750997) Homepage Journal
      just imagine if the nature of the stack wouldn't allow [buffer overruns]. If some kind of mechanism beside a simple jump had been used. Like registering an address in the CPU via an instruction and then calling that jump.

      Would it annoy you to no end if I explained that you've just described the segmented memory model that has been available on the 386 and up since 1986? It just so happens that today's "Modern OSes" (right load of bull that is) map only two memory segments, then completely ignore the GDT, LDT, and TSS after that? It is, of course, done all in the name of "Performance", the mini-god for which many a programmer has sacrificed his first born for, but has never actually managed to show that this "performance" was worth it.

      <sarcasm>But wait, we must claim that Java is slow in order to appease this mini-god! </sarcasm>
      • It just so happens that today's "Modern OSes" (right load of bull that is) map only two memory segments, then completely ignore the GDT, LDT, and TSS after that?

        Do you know why? It's because segmented memory models SUCKED. Have you ever tried to program for a 80286? It was an incomprehensible nightmare. Few if any programming languages provide appropriate models for the non-uniform memory space introduced with segments. You're on your own handling the details of ugly, klunky pointer models. The paging fe

    • Well, let's just think about that. Perhaps you're familiar with the following instruction sequence from many PowerPC programs:

      ld 0,0x10(1)
      mtlr 0
      blr

      Of course, then you wonder what the ld 0,0x10(1) does. r1 is the stack pointer, and 0x10 is the standard offset onto the stack for storing the return address. Yuppers, you still need somewhere to store the return address, and the stack is the obvious place for that.

      So my answer is that yes, you would have had exactly the same problems with that mechanis

  • Fellow slashdotters, wasn't this Windows2000's period, the same period that M$ talked of Trusted Computing? What happened to this thing called "Trusted Computing?" Is it still alive?
    • No, actually, Win2K was in it's final days before release when the TwC initiative was just getting started. Look to Server 2003 for the first release predicated competely by TwC. You'll see the security improvements there. Comapre the vulurabilities in 2003 to the vulurabilities in 2000 and its quite a difference. How many of the big name worms were a big issue for 2003?
      • Comapre the vulurabilities in 2003 to the vulurabilities in 2000 and its quite a difference. How many of the big name worms were a big issue for 2003?

        The figures you want to see are proportional to how widespread the OS is. Windows 2003, though quite capable, is not that widely deployed. Netcraft backs me up here.

    • wasn't this Windows2000's period, the same period that M$ [sic] talked of Trusted Computing?

      Trustworthy Computing was the response to high-profile security failures like Sadmind and Code Red. And if you think Trustworthy Computing is dead, just compare Windows XP SP2 to an unpatched XP install.

  • Win2k, a failure? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JeffTL ( 667728 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:48PM (#12750734)
    I can't see how you can honestly call Windows 2000 a failure -- Microsoft didn't spend more making it than they made off of it, and it was actually (in my experience, at least) more reliable than XP.

  • It was successfull, kind of... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:48PM (#12750740)
    I was the first STABLE windows platform that could handle multimedia apps.

    Security became a joke, but stability was superb.

    It was a gigantic leap from the 9x series.

    Cheers,

    Adolfo
    • The parent is right. As I recall, Win2000 was touted as "the most stable Windows ever". It promised to eliminate the blue screen of death. And, more than any of its predecessors, it did.*

      Security didn't become the dominant issue until later. Seems to me that the Register/Security Focus has a short (dare I say "revisionist") memory.

      *(That is, it was stable relative to MS products, not really stable. Viva Novell Netware!!)
      • Security didn't become the dominant issue until later. Seems to me that the Register/Security Focus has a short (dare I say "revisionist") memory.

        Security for desktops, yes. But security for servers was an issue long before.

        Which is where my memory diverges from TFA. When MS first started writing an OS and software destined to be for servers, security should have been a major concern -even at that time. That it wasn't is simply an indication (to me) that MS, a desktop company at the time, didn't do its h
  • I've got Win2k on an older machine and had no major problems with it. However, I have never installed and then removed an OS so fast as when I tried using Windows ME. It was basically like Win98 3rd Edition with a few cosmetic changes, but mostly just a big pain in the hiney.

  • Oh for one last time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Boss, Pointy Haired ( 537010 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:52PM (#12750783)
    Programmers felt vindicated that the Y2K bug didn't turn out to be that big of a deal.

    It was a big deal. Lot's of us here worked very hard to make sure that nothing bad happened and this really gets to me when people throw around the opinion that it was all a fuss over nothing.

    Get a clue.

    • Re:Oh for one last time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:22PM (#12751124) Homepage
      Absolutely, and it's all an after effect of the way it was presented in the media.

      It's kinda like there's a big office building on fire downtown. The news reporter is standing in front of the blaze, speaking in a calm voice layed thinly over barely-contained hysterics: "As you can see behind me, the fire continues to burn! If left unchecked, this fire could spread to nearby buildings, and from there continue to spread, until eventually the entire metropolitan area is burned to the ground. From there, who knows how far it could spread! Civilization itself hangs in the balance! Flee, flee for your lives! And buy duct tape!" Meanwhile, fire fighters work like hell to put out the fire, and it eventually dies. The next day everyone is wondering what the hell the big deal was and what they are going to do with all the duct tape they bought. Feeling gullible and duped, they forget that there really could have been a disaster if the fire fighters had just sat on their thumbs watching the building burn...

    • There may have been some areas where work was required (and yours probably was one of them, it sounds like)...

      But in my town, in the month or so prior to Y2k, people were charging insane ammounts to make house calls to check people's desktops for compatibility. Of course, all they did was set the date ahead, play with it, and set it back.

      Also, we had a town meeting where people asked such rediculous questions as:
      - Will my car still run?
      - Will my gasoline generator still run?
      - Will I still have fresh wate
    • I worked for a Credit Union between 1997 and 2001 and I can attest to the amount of work that went into making Y2K a non-issue. We started hitting Y2K bugs as early as the summer of 1997 with credit cards with 3-year life-spans and we keot hitting bugs until summer of 1999. Our software vendor committed an absurd amount of resources to make sure that we'd be fully operational on Jan 02, 2000. To the point that many priomised upgrades had to be pushed back to a later release date.

  • OS "Feel" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .thguorw.wodahs.> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:53PM (#12750789) Homepage Journal
    When it comes to OS's I judge them by the "feel" part of "look and feel." Win2K feels a whole not nicer than XP to me, and is closer in feel to 98, which I didn't mind, than to NT, which I hated. I wonder if some of the success just has to do with MS striking a better chord with the feel of Win2K than with their other offerings?

  • Microsoft's Most Successful Failure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArielMT ( 757715 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:55PM (#12750825) Homepage Journal

    Microsoft Bob! [toastytech.com] Oh, wait. Successful failure... hmm... Ah! Windows Millennium Edition (ME) [aroundcny.com], without a doubt! This insecure, rushed, overhyped, bug-ridden excuse for an operating system should've gone the way of Bob and New Coke even before it was officially released.

  • Even more "successful" failures (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmulvey ( 233344 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:56PM (#12750835)
    One word: Solaris.

    How's that NIS treating you for security?
    Kernel "user/group/world" security should be enough for anybody.

    You guys need to realize that you can't have credibility without objectivity. You would have a lot more success convincing people to switch to Linux if you didn't come across as zealots all the time.

  • A Failure? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:02PM (#12750904) Homepage Journal

    I'm a fervent Linux fan, but I'm also logical.

    Win2K was by far much better than Microsoft's earlier OS offerings in terms of reliability and security.

    It's like they finally realized that desktop PC monopoly didn't get them a free pass into the mainframe and server market. Realizing that, they actually produced a credible OS that wouldn't get themselves laughed at. MS has intelligent people that can do a great job (if they're not tasked with creating obstacles and artificial cross-ties in the company's product lines.) Like they did with IE before the Netscape threat was effectively vanquished.

    Win2K will be humming along for many years to come.

  • How can you knock Windows 2000? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zbuffered ( 125292 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:04PM (#12750921)
    Think about what Win2k gave us! Plug and Play, protected memory (when apps crash, the OS survives), NTFS, and USB support. All these things were necessary to help the OS do more for the end-user. Not to mention Active Directory, and Group Policies! All good stuff for Windows users. As for security issues, windows update is a much better solution than what we had with previous OSes. So what Windows 2000 did is integrated everything good about NT and 98. Yes, there were security vulnerabilities in IIS. A lot of websites got broken into. Waah.

  • Was it Win2K, or IE/OE? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Frangible ( 881728 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:08PM (#12750962)
    IIRC, Win2K didn't have too many vulnerabilities, mostly they were just in IE and Outlook Express. All the more reason to run Firefox and Thunderbird even today, as it seems exploits for IE/OE keep cropping up.
    • Oh! You found a legal win2k version free of IE and OE? Tell us where to get it, please!

      Seriously, if the company itself says "IE is an integral part of the OS", then bugs in IE _are_ bugs in the OS. Almost the same with OE: if they make the system and the app so broken that malware can infect the system so easily through email, they get to be blamed.
    • The biggest non-IE/OE bug I can recall was the Sasser worm, which attacked a vulnerability in the LSASS proces. That's not quite kernel code, but it's pretty close. There were others [microsoft.com], but that was the one with the biggest exploitation that I can recall.

      The OS itself is comparatively easy to secure. Its interactions with the outside world are fairly simple. IE and OE are expected to execute untrusted code, either from Javascript or once upon a time from VBScript (now THERE was a dumb idea) or ActiveX compo
  • 1.) Windows 2K made the crappy Gateway computers at LA Valley College's computer lab tolerable.

    2.) When they moved to Windows XP, those same Gateway computers felt like the POSes they are.

    Now that Apple will be transitioning to x86 architecture, hopefully a situation will emerge where Windows 2K can be run safely in virtualization under MacOS X. XP will never sully a computer of mine. I know you can already run Windows 2K in virtualization under Linux. But I'd like to do it under MacOS X. It probably woul

  • Define failure (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Kontinuum ( 866086 )
    On the plus side of Win2K, it would only be fair to note the millions of MS Word (yes, you may look down your noses at them, but believe it or not, most people do not use StarOffice or vi+TeX to write their documents) documents that have been created with people using Win2K. And the millions of Excel spreadsheets, and millions of presentations, etc. Now, I suppose if you define a failure in that it was not perfect, then yes, of course it was a failure. But did it do what Microsoft wanted (make ooodles of

  • If 2000 was a failure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:32PM (#12751232)
    If 2000 was a security failure what can possibly be said about XP?

  • Some thoughts on Microsoft and Pintos (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dyfet ( 154716 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:33PM (#12751250) Homepage
    Isn't this article a bit condensending, and saying, essentially, that if Ford were Microsoft, well, its great that Pinto gas tanks no longer catch fire so easily, and a real terrible shame about all those people who were killed in the interum, but hey, it's not our problem, and anyway what is past is past.

  • stop complaning... (Score:2, Informative)

    by logik3x ( 872368 )
    from to windows 98 to win2k there was a big step... humm there was windows ME but lets forget it... and that step was one forward... win2k was probably best windows os... better then xp without sp2... soplease stop saying crap about it... yeah yeah linux... whatever... not evryone fking want to build their kernel... not evryone is a fking geek... now it's not their fault fking worms evolve... you think our medicine is crap because some virus are untretable right now? right... anyways hands up to microsoft

  • That whole story is a myth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Cookie Monster ( 129545 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:40PM (#12751326)
    They've got security confused with reliability.

    Before Win2k, reliability was what everybody complained about, blue screens of death, constant crashing, runing out of resources, that sort of thing.

    Microsoft listened, claimed reliability was their priority, and eventually released Win2k which fixed all of those problems. Win2k has crashed on me all of 3 times while using it both at work and at home for nearly five years, twice due to worn out CPU fans, and once due to hard drive failure. So while my experience is anecdotal I must say Win2k was an incredible success - more than I thought was possible from that company, it certainly changed my view of Microsoft.

    Fast forward a few years (2002 - 2003ish), BSODs are now a thing of the past, leaving the increasing viruses and malware as the #1 headache on Windows.

    Microsoft listens, claims security is now their #1 priority...

    Will their security push be as effective as their stability push? only time will tell, but after the magic they worked with Win2k I'm no longer putting it above them.

    Personally I care little, Windows boxes I've had connected to the internet for years without a virus checker are still clean. It appears Windows viruses so far have been limited to inexperienced users and boxes that aren't behind a proper firewall.
  • I use Win2K, and I'll probably use Win2K until they stop sending out security updates for it. I had XP for a while but then I decided to move to 2K, merely because XP was slow on the same hardware (128MB of ram, AMD Duron 1.8Ghz). While XP was swapping all the time, 2K was quite snappy; not fast, but quick enough to get my work done and use Winamp. Right now I'm typing this on a P3 laptop, and 2K is STILL chugging along quite damn quickly. I even use it on my main box, which has 384MB of RAM...2K runs on an

  • Lol took them long enough to "get concerned" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stumbles ( 602007 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:23PM (#12751797)
    just as security was becoming more interesting to more people

    You mean more interesting to Window users. Other operating systems have always been concerned about security

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:24PM (#12751807)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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