Windows 2000

[LuckyTaxi]

It's that time of the year again and I need to submit my budget request. Should i go ahead and upgrade all 100+ computers to XP or stay with Windows 2000?

I could've sworn I read somewhere that they were going to stop supporting windows 2000 sometime this year.

 

[stash]

June 30, 2005. About three months. After this time, security updates will only be available to those with a custom support agreement. Custom support agreements are a signifcant expense, and require an existing Premier support contract (also many $$).

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's kind of strange though, even prior to the end of mainstream support for W2K, and with SP5 apparently completed and about to be put on tap, MS canned it, and instead offered a collection of security patches only instead, in the form of one of their infamous "rollups". What about the bugfix patches that were part of SP5??? Those are actually more important to some of us, especially those that have their own firewall installed, and don't use IE or OE, and thus have no real need for 95% of the security patches that MS releases. But things like kernel-memory resource leaks in the USB stack, or faulty locking primitives in the SCSI port driver leading to race conditions - now those are the kinds of bugfixes that I need. It seems that in the case of W2K, MS decided to "close up shop and go home early", earlier than their previously-posted "store hours", if you know what I mean. The truth is, MS doesn't really care about their customers, any more than is required to keep them on the constant upgrade treadmill. If they did, there would have been an IE 6 SP2 update for W2K, there would have been a standlone IE7 with tabbed browsing update and working full PNG image support *years* ago, and most certainly, they wouldn't have dropped the W2K SP5 release, just like they did the NT4 SP7 release, years ago, in a bid to attempt to force customers to upgrade instead.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
It's kind of strange though, even prior to the end of mainstream support for W2K, and with SP5 apparently completed and about to be put on tap, MS canned it, and instead offered a collection of security patches only instead, in the form of one of their infamous "rollups". What about the bugfix patches that were part of SP5??? Those are actually more important to some of us, especially those that have their own firewall installed, and don't use IE or OE, and thus have no real need for 95% of the security patches that MS releases. But things like kernel-memory resource leaks in the USB stack, or faulty locking primitives in the SCSI port driver leading to race conditions - now those are the kinds of bugfixes that I need. It seems that in the case of W2K, MS decided to "close up shop and go home early", earlier than their previously-posted "store hours", if you know what I mean. The truth is, MS doesn't really care about their customers, any more than is required to keep them on the constant upgrade treadmill. If they did, there would have been an IE 6 SP2 update for W2K, there would have been a standlone IE7 with tabbed browsing update and working full PNG image support *years* ago, and most certainly, they wouldn't have dropped the W2K SP5 release, just like they did the NT4 SP7 release, years ago, in a bid to attempt to force customers to upgrade instead.

What other software company supports and updates older releases indefinitely? Five years is not an unreasonably short support cycle for a piece of software.

 

[mechBgon]

Win2000 Pro should be entering Extended Support phase at June 30 2005, and receive patches at the Windows Update site for two years beyond that date, unless Microsoft has changed boats midstream on me.

 

[stash]

My apologies, mechBgon is correct. Windows 2000 will be entering extended support on June 30, 2005, not end of life like NT4. Security updates will be available throughout the entire five year extended support period. The first two years they will be available on WU, and the last three years on the Microsoft downloads web site. Paid support will still be available as it is now, and security update support will still be free. Hotfixes will not be provided free of charge in the extended support period, unless you purchase a hotfix contract.

New features will not be added during extended support, and design change requests will not be accepted. Which is why none of the things Larry is complaining about will be implemented. Microsoft is a company with finite resources, like anyone else. They are also a publically traded company, so they have a responsibility to do what their share holders want. And it does not make much business sense to expend resources on products indefinitely.

The custom support agreement stuff I mentioned above applies to a product that is out of extended support (currently they are only available for NT4).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MrChad
What other software company supports and updates older releases indefinitely? Five years is not an unreasonably short support cycle for a piece of software.

I'm not talking about indefinately - rather, that MS has failed to fully support it, during their previously announced and defined support periods. If one considers that a purchase of a valid legal license to own/install a copy of that OS, also includes the documented mainstream support lifetime period, then by MS cutting that short by cancelling the release of SP5, MS is stealing from their customers, the support that the customers have already arguably paid for.

IOW, I'm not complaining about when mainstream support for W2K is scheduled to be phased out - I'm complaining that MS isn't living up to that support agreement, by canning W2K SP5 during that still-supported time period.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: STaSh
New features will not be added during extended support, and design change requests will not be accepted. Which is why none of the things Larry is complaining about will be implemented.

I call BS on that one. MS has already promised (in fact, forced to promise, at the behest of their corporate customers), that service packs will not introduce any major new features, and MS stuck to that in W2K SP2, SP3, and SP4. (SP1 did indeed introduce a few new features, which is why the complaints arose originally.)

So if a SP5 exists to fix bugs, and not to add new features, nor any significant design changes, why did MS pull it? (Well, we both do already know the answer to that - to attempt to force corps that were sitting on the fence with W2K to move to XP/2003.)

Originally posted by: STaSh
Microsoft is a company with finite resources, like anyone else. They are also a publically traded company, so they have a responsibility to do what their share holders want. And it does not make much business sense to expend resources on products indefinitely.

This is sort of funny, coming (indirectly) from a company with: 1) more cash in the bank than any other company in the industry, and 2) that only just recently started to pay dividends to their shareholders, unlike the vast majority of less-greedy publically-owned corporations that regularly pay dividends to their shareholders.

 

[stash]

I call BS on that one. MS has already promised (in fact, forced to promise, at the behest of their corporate customers), that service packs will not introduce any major new features, and MS stuck to that in W2K SP2, SP3, and SP4. (SP1 did indeed introduce a few new features, which is why the complaints arose originally.)

So if a SP5 exists to fix bugs, and not to add new features, nor any significant design changes, why did MS pull it? (Well, we both do already know the answer to that - to attempt to force corps that were sitting on the fence with W2K to move to XP/2003.)

What does this have to do with DCRs not being accepted during extended support?

[/quote]This is sort of funny, coming (indirectly) from a company with: 1) more cash in the bank than any other company in the industry, and 2) that only just recently started to pay dividends to their shareholders, unlike the vast majority of less-greedy publically-owned corporations that regularly pay dividends to their shareholders. [/quote]

Having a lot of cash does not change the fact that you have finite resources. Should Microsoft spend a chunk of that money to hire thousands of developers and support personnel to support a five year old product? Or should they use the resources they have to work on current and future products? As a shareholder, I would want them to do the latter.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: STaSh
Having a lot of cash does not change the fact that you have finite resources. Should Microsoft spend a chunk of that money to hire thousands of developers and support personnel to support a five year old product? Or should they use the resources they have to work on current and future products? As a shareholder, I would want them to do the latter.

Fine. But as a paying customer, that doesn't support my needs. Thus tending to make me a non-customer. As a shareholder, perhaps you might/should also be concerned about that factor.

Yes, I do believe that MS should support their own products, after all, isn't that what they claimed that they would do? But then again, this isn't the first time that MS has backtracked on their public statements, in search of greater $$$.

But the problem is, every time they do it, it pisses their existing customers off. If nothing else illustrates clearly that MS has monopoly power over the market, then this should, because their customers keep coming back regardless - mostly because they have no real choice. If everyone else uses Microsoft, they must too.

 

[Snorlax]

This subject is interesting to me because when I run Windows Update on my system (Windows 2000 professional) it says I need to download 41 critcal updates. Do I really need all this? I had them all installed at one time but got eaten up with worms and couldn't repair IE 6.0 from Control Panel without uninstalling a bunch of the patches. For some reason if you have SP4 it "hides" the IE 6.0 installation in the software list. Still trying to get a handle on protecting my system from attacks but certainly would install all the updates if that would help. It is just aggravating if you ever have to uninstall IE 6.0 to fix something. Thanks.

 

[mechBgon]

Yes, SP4 plus all subsequent updates are recommended. In the meantime, I hope you've got a firewall and antivirus software 🙂

 

[Snorlax]

Yes, I did install firewall and antivirus software. Got some good tips from Schadenfroh's posts. I had VirusScan installed before but it appearently wasn't doing the job. I downloaded AntiVir (free) and ran it and it found all kinds of stuff. I also downloaded the Sygate firewall but haven't figured it all out yet. I'm sure it's doing the job but whenever I go to a new webpage it asks me wheather to allow connection or not. Most of the time I'm not sure what to do. We have BlackIce at work and I never know it there. I guess the IT people keep it running that way. Thanks.