No IE7 For 2k, Now In Extended Service 469
Yankovic writes "Looks like MS will not support IE7 on Windows 2000. 'It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000... [S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.' While security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox." All the details about an MS product's fall into senility available at the lifecycle page.
One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah! I'll keep Win2K and Firefox, thanks.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll second that emotion... Although my primary machine is a PowerMac G5, my secondary runs Win2k for games, and stuff that "only happens on Windows" (which ain't too much anymore.)
If I'm completely crazy, somebody slap me, but wasn't Microsoft convicted of anti-trust violations relating to their monopoly on the browser? Wasn't a serious issue of their case the "need" to integrate Internet Explorer wit
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, if you need to sacrifice compatibility, I
Wrong type of "compatibility" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Informative)
Except they don't. Microsoft has one of the best track records in the business for backwards compatibility. Heck, 90% of their platform problems come from their overriding desire to provide legacy support.
MS and legacy support (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, MS DOES put a great deal of effort into backwards compatibility--to the point of including a DOS emulator in NT4/2K/XP (WoWExec) that is so seamless most people would never think that the aforementioned OSes are no more compatible with DOS than Linux is (it just happens to have really good emulation). There is a blog by a microsoftie called something like "the old new thing" that explains the lengths MS goes to to maintain compatibility with popular legacy apps.
There are two problems with the efforts MS has put into legacy support: Firstly, it has done a lot to make their codebase cryptic, nearly unmanageable and sub-optimal. This is a problem the likes of IBM and my employer have to contend with as well, except that DOS and NT were not engineered with then intention of being the core of a product for decades. As a result, you get a massive blocks of code,
The second problem with MS Legacy support is that it tends to be rather selective. In the past, when there was a very popular 3rd party app that sold a lot of copies of Windows (certain desktop publishing packages come to mind) legacy support was done without question. when MS Office sales are slumping...well it looks like time to add a few more features that 0.001% of users asked for and use them as an exuse to break file format compatibilities. The thing about IE7 beig "too advanced" for anything older than XPsp2 is another one of those cop-outs. A little company and a non-profit foundation managed to make more secure browsers with innovative features that runs on multiple platforms and MS can't use their billions to engineer something that works with multiple versions of a SINGLE PLATFORM? Bullshit. They are trying to accelerate the elimination of Win2k because it is limiting their revenue potential.
I understand that legacy support is expensive and that MS is beter than a lot of SW companies like Red Hat (not that that is totally Red Hat's fault--they just don't have the resources). The difference is that Free software often continues to work on anything it'll compile on, and if you do have to upgrade you don't often have to pay through the nose for a highly disruptive upgrade. The IE7 compatibility issue is artificial--MS could EASILY make it run on win2K with its resources and say "there is no official support--use at your own risk". They just made design decisions to deliberately create critical dependencies on XPsp2. Even more than concerns about support costs, MS wants to boost stagnant OS sales.
Problem is, that makes IE7 an expensive browser for someone like me, whose only MS OS is win2K. Firefox is free in all senses of the word, so IE7 makes for a pretty weak justification for an OS upgrade when Firefox is much more convenient to get and I don't need to re-install my OS.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Bollocks. There are numerous examples of "applications" on every platform that are tied to certain versions of the system libararies, tools and kernel.
Safari+WebCore on OS X, to name just one directly comparable example.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because ~60% of their corporate userbase is still Win2k? Or how about the fact that they haven't released an enhancement to Win2k in over two years? C'mon folks, Win2k is only 12 months older than XP. The question real question is why wouldn't MS give Win2k users some love considering that the browser wars are starting to heat up again?
So let's sum up the past two years of "Mainline Support" from MS for Win2k users: no Service Pack 5, none of IE6 security enhancements in XP will make it to Win2k and no IE7 for Win2k users.
MS is really giving Windows 2000 users the middle finger. MS is partly responsible for the security mess that is Windows 2000 and they should do *something* to help fix the situation. It isn't my fault as a user that MS hasn't released an operating sysytem for going on four years now. Why would I now pay for an OS that is over 3.5 years old?
It is really starting to feel that, at least part of the reason MS is going on an on about security is just another ploy to try to get customers to upgrade to the next greatest version of their product more quickly.
If this story is accurate, then this is a huge misstep by MS. MS is really opening the door for Firefox to further accelerate its adoption.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Most corporations running W2K were early adopters for Microsoft, companies who either moved quickly onto 2K or upgraded from NT4. WinXP was sold as a consumer upgrade that provided almost no additional features for the corp user, so they passed. Now they (we) are being punished for the fact that Longhorn is years behind schedule. W2K might be old, but it's users are very entrenched customers.
Note, normally I wouldnt stand for people bitching about a 5-6 year old OS, but in this case Microsoft has not delievered an upgrade and should extend the support window until they do.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. You can activate as many times as you want on the same hardware without a problem. Modify the hardware enough, and you'll have to phone in to get an activation code, which takes all of 5 minutes (on a bad day) if you're on the up & up.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php [aumha.org]
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:2, Funny)
anti-trust violations (Score:4, Interesting)
Source: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9400/9462.htm [usdoj.gov]
"V.Termination
1. Unless this Court grants an extension, this Final Judgment will expire on the fifth anniversary of the date it is entered by the Court."
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:2)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Just change your settings to get rid of all the XP GUI crap and change back to classical ev
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:2)
Silly Mac user. None of these problems affect you.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Funny)
Slackware 10.1 [slackware.org]
Thanks for asking
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:2)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Funny)
Longhorn! Longhorn will be decades ahead of Tiger!
Um, literally. Decades.
Re:Why do so many people love Win2K? (Score:3, Informative)
I spend a large portion of my working day writing stuff that interfaces with Windows on some low-ish levels. Nothing like driver writing, but a lot of system management stuff, scripting, network mapping, AD stuff, system scripting. I'm up to my ears in API stuff most of the time.
Most of the tools I create have 9x and NT versions, for obvious reasons. 99.999 times out of 100 the 2K and XP versions are
Terrible Sunday News (Score:5, Insightful)
This raises an interesting question - Why/How can Firefox, which runs happily on W2K and others, offer better security, while IE cannot do the same on an OS developed by MS itself?
I'm sure Firefox will be laughed at if it said it could not develop a browser for Windows because some of the security work in Firefox relies on operating system functionality in Linux that is non-trivial to port to Windows.
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:2)
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:2)
Like the arcticle says IE replies on features of Windows for some apsects of it's security, the modern implementations/fixes are not being backported to Win2k so the browser wont be able to take advantage of fixed libraries/functionality. It's not that they can't do it - they have just chosen not to.
Firefox supplies a lot of
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:3, Insightful)
That one's easy.
It's a strategic decision of Microsoft's to provide poor security on older products, since their business model is extremely focused on getting recurring revenue from people upgrading to newer versions. Since businesses are running fine on the old versions, Microsoft needs to create problems with the old stuff to force them to upgrade.
Fortuna
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Microsoft, IE is integrated into the operating system itself -- it is no longer a standalone application [microsoft.com]. Ostensibly they did this to allow greater desktop-to-Internet integration, but given the inherent insecurity of ActiveX, the tendency for the forces of evil to use it maliciously, and the inability of users to lock it down, it's not exactly a hot selling point these days [answers.com].
Firefox, on the other hand, stands to benefit immensely from all this. It offers a free, lightweight, standalone browser whose programming environment makes it easy for developers to extend its functionality [roachfiend.com] without coopting its security (so far). It does this without any hooks into the operating system, and offers a variety of ways to combat malware, popups and generally obnoxious behavior (Flash movies [mozdev.org], rampant advertising [mozdev.org], etc).
Microsoft might claim that they won't be releasing any further security patches or functional upgrades to Windows 2000 or IE6. But as of September 2004, ~49% of Windows users still use Windows 2000 or lower (98, 95, NT, etc) [zdnet.com]. Trying to scare users into upgrading their OS, so they can take advantage of a marginally improved, questionably more secure Windows, doesn't seem to be working anymore [freerepublic.com]. And I'm by no means a Linux zealot -- I'm an ASP/SQL programmer, have been using Windows since v3.1, and am a huge fan of Microsoft's development tools / languages.
Besides landing my most recent job, discovering Firefox was the best tech-related thing that's come along in recent memory. It's inspired me to start learning more about client-side development again, after seeing what's possible with AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) [wikipedia.org], standards-compliant CSS and XHTML. Once Dean Edwards' CSS-based IE7 stylesheet [edwards.name] matures a bit more, developers will be able to instantly upgrade the set of standards-compliant available to IE 5/6 users. At that point, who will need IE 7? The days of developing wonderful new HTML and CSS tags that are only supported by one browser are in decline...... Firefox's market share has risen to just under 10% in the past year, while Microsoft's market share has dropped to under 90% for the first time since Netscape was still relevant. IE7 won't become ubiquitous for a long, long time, especially if Microsoft doesn't plan on making it available to users of its older operating systems. Why would developers of any web applications besides IE-only Intranets/Extranets create products that utilized features only available to a very small set of the installed user base?
So whatever, Microsoft. Dig your own grave, if you insist upon doing so. I'll continue to use your server-side tools, provided something better and easier-to-use doesn't come along, but at this point, you've lost me as a client-side developer of IE. Not that you should care, of course..... but if you can lose a devoted developer like me, I have to wonder how many others you've push away. It appears it's not all about "Developers, Developers, Developers!", as Steve Ballmer & Co. would have us believe.
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:2, Funny)
That sounds pretty suspicious to me. If you aren't a script then you shouldn't have anything to fear.
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:2)
Yeah, and we all know how much faster and how many more features IE has.
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been posting and I haven't had to type in anything from an image tilted 5 degrees with a bunch of static (or whatever
I... can't tell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I... can't tell (Score:2)
Re:I... can't tell (Score:5, Insightful)
Like someone mentioned on slashdot before (paraphrased):
"I'd rather browse the net with a browser, not an operating system."
When (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:When (Score:5, Funny)
Re:When (Score:2)
What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:2)
So what, the statement is incorrect anyway but so what. Tabs are nice but the are not the be all and end all of browsing. Some people like them, some hate them, they are not a big deal.
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:2)
MyIE [myie2.com] for instances lets IE have tabs. Whats wrong with this for tabs?
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:4, Informative)
SlimBrowser [flashpeak.com] is on that integrates into IE seamlessly and gives you tabs, pop up blacking, and all the other "obvious to everyone but ms" features
Of course the better [mozilla.org] alternative [mozilla.org] is still available
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about tabs. A new version of Internet Explorer hasn't came out since 2001, which is a very long time in computing years. Unless Windows 2000 users use an alternative browser, they would be stuck with Internet Explorer 6 as the latest IE browser.
This isn't a good idea on Microsoft's part, because there are still many users using Windows 2000 (in fact, Windows 2000 is still supported; and I believe that Windows 2000 is the best version of Windows that was ever released), and if Microsoft abandons all of its Windows 2000 users in the broswer market, where are all of these people going to move to? They're not going to spend $$$ upgrading to XP over a broswer; they would more than likely switch to Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape/KMeleon/Opera/etc.
During the original broswer war, IE was on almost every major platform. It was available on Windows as far back as Windows 3.1, Mac OS 7.5 and higher, and even Solaris; the only sizable community that didn't get IE was the Linux/BSD group (that community used Netscape 4.x until Mozilla or Konqueror became usable; I don't know which came first since I was a Windows user back then). It seemed to me that Microsoft wanted to control the broswer market, so instead of only offering IE to its latest Windows offerings, it offered it to a wide array of operating system (even though Netscape had a wider array; it included Linux).
Now in the second Broswer Wars, Microsoft is completely ignoring its older Windows versions, the Macintosh, and *nix. Yet Firefox is available on a wide array of platforms. For example, even though Mozilla doesn't have official support for Firefox on *BSD, using *BSD ports (which applies the appropriate patches to the source), it compiles nicely and runs well. If I were Microsoft, I would be a little scared. Just about every platform can use Firefox, and if it isn't available on that platform (such as Mac OS Classic), somebody can port it. If Linux or Mac OS X takes off, then Microsoft would lose its stranglehold in the browser market. If Microsoft wants to win this broswer war, it should port IE 7 to just about every operating system imaginable. Old Windows versions, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris; you name it, Microsoft should port it to that platform. If Microsoft really wants 95% marketshare, it should stop ignoring old Windows versions and other operating systems and start porting.
OS Platform Stats (Score:3, Informative)
In two years, Linux and the Mac have shown little growth at all, while XP's share has doubled.
If this is what the world looks like to a web developer, I don't think Microsoft has much to fear in the mass consumer market, where the browser wars translate into serious money and power, W2K was never a factor, and where Win XP has been the default OEM install since August of '01.
Win XP... 64%
W2K........20%
Win 98......4%
Linux.........3%
Mac...........3%
Wi n.NET.. 1%
Others.......0%
Re:OS Platform Stats (Score:3, Insightful)
The stats I quoted from W3Schools were for the last two years. w3School's OS stats for March 2003:
The one unmistakable lesson to be drawn here is that Windows users stay within the Windows family, they do not migrate in significant numbers to alterative operating systems.
W2K.......42%
Win XP...29%
Win 98....15%
Win NT.... 7%
Linux........2%
Mac..........2%
Win 95......1%
Others......0%
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't have to branch out to other platforms to enforce that kind of marketshare. They just have to make sure that users of Windows can't remove IE from their machines, and make it as difficult as possible to use something else. With increasing dependence on Windows Update, it's freaking impossible to get rid of IE. And how many stupid apps use the IE engine internally, or forcefully open IE even when it's not your default browser?
Jasin NataelRe:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:3, Informative)
In addition to Solaris, IE was also available for HP-UX though not Irix. I was seriously considering picking up a used SparcS
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:2)
bad move on Microsoft's part (Score:5, Insightful)
Also don't forget webmasters (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition to this, imagine that in about 2 years we have a majority of PNG-capable browsers (IE7, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror; pretty much everybody except IE5+6) and you want to use transparent PNGs.
Will you write:
If you run WinXP Service Pack 2, download IE7, if you run WinXP with an earlier version download Firefox, if you run Win2K or Win98, download Firefox and if you run MacOSX or Linux download Firefox.
or will you just write:
Download Firefox
Firefox works everywhere.
The M$ resopnse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dramatized for your enjoyment.
The cost of Internet Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The cost of Internet Explorer (Score:5, Funny)
hmm... lynx on cygwin
Re:The cost of Internet Explorer (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like (Score:2)
And yet USB for NT 4.0 exists and works just fine (I know, I've got it running for a USB keyboard, mouse and old Canon printer.)
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Informative)
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Interesting)
So does that mean I won't be able to run it on XP with SP1 either? I mean obviously I use Firefox, but if I'm going to be forced to have Microsoft's shitty browser installed, I'd rather it be the latest, greatest and most secure. And I still don't trust SP2 and all the crap it dumps on your box.
Just a thought.
--
NoVA Underground: Northern Virginia message boards and chat, with Fairfax County public ticket/arrest search [novaunderground.com]
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Crap" like pop-up blocking for IE6, a better wireless manager, NX support, firewall on by default, etc? It blows my mind that all these windows users hate the system they use and complain when they get a bunch of needed features. Of course, there are issues with the update, but thats true of any modern OS.
If you're using windows XP you should have migrated to SP2 long ago if you cared about security and stability. Then again this is slashdot, enjoy your ill-informed karma whore points.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah yeah, "switch to linux." I don't even want to start that thread here. Linux is definitely my choice for a server operating system. Nothing beats it hands down (well, maybe FreeBSD for some implementati
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:2)
...and if the "crap" the original poster is talking about is merely notifications from the new Security Center, those can be turned off. In the left hand column (Resources), click "Change the way Security Center alerts me," then uncheck any or all the options.
There, now people can stop saying they hate SP 2 because it "babies" them with stuff like this.
Oblig Sneakers Quote (Score:2)
=]
Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose they have to release something new in Longhorn, they could make the window borders even bigger and more ugly and cripple the performance a bit more but with all the things they've dropped from longhorn they need some killer feature like copying firefox tabs to justify forcing another pointless upgrade on the corporate world.
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2, Troll)
Of course, those geeks tend to be the ones too stupid to figure out how to set the style into "Classic" mode. XP doesn't have to look like a fisherprice toy - and I don't know of any other reasons why one would want to run Windows 2000 instead of XP. Except maybe activation (oh, boo hoo).
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
How about the lists on the M$ site which document current major programs which XP SP2 breaks?
How about a buggy firewall?
How about networking problems?
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
This just shows you don't do anything important on your computer and you never travel.
"My Windows XP won't boot" is the equivalent of, "The dog ate my homework." except you get fired/lose the sale/your machines break/etc.
"oh boo hoo" indeed!!
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
Have you ever tried to connect a US laptop to a non-North American phone system? Will M$ foot the bill for an international phone call from the other side of the world because they've locked your computer up? How do you do this from an airplane?
The point is their activation control makes use of any non-corporate verison of XP useless for any kind of critical use. It's only suited for a game machine or hobbies with that crap.
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
Sure I can reconfigure all the GUI options or i can just install 2k and get it configured sensibly out of the box and get the added performance bonus.
Still Works (Score:2)
Re:Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:2)
Lazy FUDer (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/misctools/fwbro
Re:Lazy FUDer (Score:2)
http://www.myie2.com/html_en/home.htm [myie2.com]
The IE rendering engine with most of the features people get all gushy about in the Mozilla/Firefox browsers.
Re:Lazy FUDer (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, one of the things most people love about Mozilla/Firefox is that they don't use the IE rendering engine - they use one that can cope with ancient 1990s technology like XHTML and transparent PNGs and CSS layout instead.
And, not to rain on your parade, a glance at the MyIE page shows that the wonderful features you're expecting me to be impressed by are... tabbed browsing and mouse gestures. Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned those are basic minimal features required for a browser to qualify as usable. I couldn't find anything there about a MyIE equivalent of Greasemonkey. Or Flashblock. Or EditCSS.
Seriously, you should give Firefox a try (or another try, as appropriate). It's got all the features people get gushy about in MyIE, and many more, and - as an added bonus - it doesn't use the IE rendering engine.
What's needed for a secure browser? (Score:2)
But it begs the question: what's needed for a secure browser?
First and foremost, don't let outsiders penetrate my system. MS failed this. Firefox failed this. What does it take to get this right?
Re:What's needed for a secure browser? (Score:2)
But it begs the question: what's needed for a secure browser?
No, it raises the question.
First and foremost, don't let outsiders penetrate my system. MS failed this. Firefox failed this. What does it take to get this right?
For one thing, how long was Firefox vulnerable vs. how long was Internet Explorer vulnerable?
Secure web browsers already exist. (Score:2)
It's OK Windows 2000. (Score:3, Funny)
Come on. Just download Firefox and you can hang out with the other cool kids.
Aw... Is that a smilie emoticon I see in your window?!
[Mr. Burns] Excellent... [/Mr. Burns]
I'll not miss IE7! (Score:2)
My problem comes when using third-party software. You see, in some of these software(s) like Adobe's latest release (7.0), CCleaner and the like, when you try to visit the web from within the software, IE is started! This
Just another forced upgrade (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, BS. This is just another way to justify getting us to pay for a new version of Windows.
And Standards Compliant (Score:3, Insightful)
And the only browsers that will be standards compliant for Windows 2k will be the aforementioned Opera and Firefox.
Winning Combination (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Winning Combination (Score:2)
You are living in your own little Gentoo world. Microsoft doesn't
It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:5, Interesting)
During the American antitrust case against MS several experts testified that IE could be separated from the OS in a matter of weeks.
Refusing to make a version of IE7 a part of win 2000 is as much a business decision as a technical one.
They want businesses who are not buying XP to get off win 2000 and buy XP.
I am not bashing MS, but it seems from what I have seen that XP is incredibly vulnerable to attack. In addition to managers not wanting to fork out the money for XP, their network people, many of whom are microsoft weanies, do not want to put their networks in harms way by using XP for their servers.
At some point the managers and network will capitulate. MS will stop supporting 2000 completely.
The question is how long the managers and network people will drag their feet, how much resentment towards MS this will generate, and what the effect of that resentment will be.
Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:2)
XP incinerated previous records [microsoft.com] and sold 17 million copies in its first two months.
I am not bashing MS, but it seems from what I have seen that XP is incredibly vulnerable to attack.
What you have seen? Which of the two do you use? Neither? Speculation is one thing. Making an argument is another. I've seen much the opposite. Granted, there have been issues, and SP
Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:5, Interesting)
Your phrase "Granted, there have been issues" is what my original post is about.
I make friends with the network staff at every job I go to. I have heard a lot of noise from them about XP and how they are going to hold onto 2000 as long as they can. In my private life I have had a number of friends( and even more anecdotal accounts from friends of friends ) of XP getting sacked by all manor of opportunistic programs in a very short span of time after being put into operation.
You could blame it on the internet being a more insecure place then it used to be, but if that was true all of the 2000 boxes I use and all of the 2000 boxes my friends in networking take care of should be getting sacked just as bad as the XP boxes.
It isn't happening.
Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm one of those admins that didn't upgrade to XP and won't until forced to do so.
From personal experience I have to patch XP systems weekly at the very least - depends on how often MS releases a "Critical Up
Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes - Win2k is *old*. It's going into extended support (== only security updates) in a couple of months. Does RedHat actively support RH from 5-6 years ago? Does *anyone* support back-porting new features to versions of their products that are that old?
their network people, many of whom are microsoft weanies, do not want to put their networks in harms way by using XP for their servers.
Two things:
1)
typo (Score:2)
more accurately, this should read:
When will MS realize that integrating the browser with the OS is never a good thing.
DirectX Too. (Score:2)
Already seen that with 98.. Wouldnt fly...
How effing difficult can it be? (Score:2)
So what are they saying? W2K is so fundamentally buggered that we can't fix it? Or is it really a case of we'd like you to pointlessly trade up to another OS which will offer you very few additional features if you're a desktop user?
However, Microsoft have yet again shot themselves in the foot. Their whole recent history with IE in fact has been a disaster and I would have h
Integrated with OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Can't be backported" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yeah, the latest version of Windows Media Player can't be stripped from Windows because it's part of the OS." Only to be proved dead wrong.
I mean, we're talking about "user interface" changes and catching up withthe W3C times such as truly supporting the latest CSS standards.
Why on earth can't Windows 2000 do this?
MS should just tell it as it is, we hope you upgrade to take more money from, albeit in more euphemistic way OR simply state another valid reason. We'd rather not have to do regression testing on an older platform. Again, find a euphemism.
-M
Lingering Exploits (Score:3, Interesting)
But that is their plan, force people to 'upgrade', even when what you have does the job you need. Gotta milk the consumer for every dime.
Give 'em a break (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad MS isn't a massive software corporation with loads of resources and cash to throw at such a thing, but since they're young and struggling and don't have the staffing to port things back to widely used versions of their OS, I think we should all cut 'em some slack.
I'm surprised they made IE6 available for Win2K (Score:3, Interesting)
Software and Driver Installation? (Score:3, Interesting)
When installing a new HP printer I got (HP 5700 series), I ran into some problems when I tried to install the drivers/software for the thing in Win98. HP required that I have IE6 to install the thing (bullshit, I know). Well, I installed IE6 and it went fine, but what if I didn't have access to IE6 in 98?
Will I be prevented from installing software and drivers for products in the future because MS is deciding to buttf*ck me for not going to their "latest and greatest" system?
Win2k vs Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
The other group (ans these are the ones Im talking about) are those that for one reason or another belive that win2k is the best Windoze OS (better than XP, better than 2003)...most of these will state stability as their reason for using win2k...others will say that XP has too much bloat and/or eye candy. What M$ is banking on is that these users will switch to a new version of Windoze (XP or 2003)...but what is keeping these users from switching to a Linux distro?
It pretty safe to say that the majority of these users will be looking for office support and not exactly games support...if the argument is that Lotus Notes doesnt work or I need M$ Office, you can always buy a copy of Crossover Office [codeweavers.com] for $40.00...much cheaper than even an upgrade to XP/2003.
And for most Windoze apps, you dont even need to purchase Crossover Office...all you need is a script like This [sidenet.ddo.jp] one.
They have played this move before, but this time it could come back to bite them.
Re:Win2k vs Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm one of them. You run Win2K. Windows XP runs you, by remote control from Redmond. There are still corporate sites installing new Win2K systems. It's more reliable than Windows XP, because Microsoft keeps putting new stuff into Windows XP and breaking it. The XP machines require significantly more attention than the Win2K machines.
And all our real work is on QNX,
Bingo (Score:2)
On a diff note, hopefully MS will update the hosts file for Longhorn and add some fscking intelligence to the damn thing.
It'll block xxx.com, but not www.xxx.com or xxx.com/toolbar/installer.exe