Windows Longhorn and Drive Letters

As a customer, I'd prefer they don't spend a lot of resources on older OS's. Developers don't work for free, so Microsoft would either need to charge more for products currently generating revenue or remove programmers from current projects and assign them to revising older Windows versions. Either way, as a customer, I'm not too happy.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

It is the fact that corporations that have a vested interest in Windows 2000 Pro may prefer to stay there as opposed to being forced to migrate to yet another platform.

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We're not being forced. We just won't get updates.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

It was bad enough having to go from a Primary/Backup domain controller setup to Active Directory, why would they want to have to update their machines to an OS that is bloated with consumer niceties like Windows Movie Maker, MSN Messenger, a fancy Media Player and crap like that? Who wants to have to upgrade 5000 desktops with more hard drive space, more system memory and more intense video requirements when the NT platform you already have works fine for you?

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As a network administrator, I thougt it was a GOOD thing to go from PDC's & BDC's to AD. It's a much more robust solution. And Microsoft allowed for all sorts of different migration scenarios and domain modes to ease the transition.

The items that get installed with Windows are customizable. I don't need to include MSN Messenger, Media Player, or a whole lot of other things in the desktop OS I deploy to my end users. Basically, it's just a matter of editing an INF for an unattended install. (Or manually removing 'em and using a cloning or deployment utility.)

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

It is very telling that such a high percentage of people prefer to keep their Windows 2000 Pro installations instead of moving to Windows XP.

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That's not necessarily an endorsement of 2000 over XP. I think it's more a combination of a few different things:
* Desktop replacement cycles. Most companies plan to migrate en masse on set schedules.
* Custom application development and testing. Larger companies often have specialized apps written in-house. It takes time and manpower to test 'em on various OS's. Unless there's some return on investment, this testing usually isn't a corporate priority, so upgrades can take some time.
* Software licensing costs. If a company is a volume license customer, it costs to upgrade. If they're a software assurance customer, then the upgrade is covered by their licensing.
* "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Personally, as a network administrator, I prefer XP to 2000. The functional differences aren't huge, but there are enough small things (like various Group Policy settings) that make XP easier to manage.

I don't think asking for continued security patches and key compatibility updates is in any way unreasonable.

That aside, the loss in production migrating to XP from 2K for so little gain could be and appears to be cost prohibitive for many large companies. If they choose to put off the migration even though 2K will lack those key updates, that should tell Microsoft a thing or two.

It's not ucnommon to run into entire offices still running NT4 SP6. Our customer still want our products to run on it, even though MSFT dropped support a while ago. Even though 2k isn't going to be fully support by Microsoft, don't expect it to disappear anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I don't think asking for continued security patches and key compatibility updates is in any way unreasonable.

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In a similar manner you must think it is not unreasonable to ask General Motors to add passenger airbags to a 2000 model year Blazer?

The agency I work for will no longer place Windows 2k systems back into service as of July 2. We'll still have about 100 systems running 2K and 4 or 5 on 98, but as they go down they have to be replaced, it will be with XP. And most if not all will cycle out of service late this summer. We will have gone from 85% 9x to 99% XP in less than three years. Time spent at local systems by techs is down 80+ percent. I seldom leave my office these days.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I don't think asking for continued security patches and key compatibility updates is in any way unreasonable.

That aside, the loss in production migrating to XP from 2K for so little gain could be and appears to be cost prohibitive for many large companies. If they choose to put off the migration even though 2K will lack those key updates, that should tell Microsoft a thing or two.

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I don't think there's that much loss in production, most of the work PCs here are P4 2Ghz Willamettes with GF4s, they were bought with Win2k and run it all their life. These machines are coming to the end of their life, once we move onto developing next generation games, we are going to need new PCs, when those are bought they will come with XP instead of 2K and work will continue as normal afterwards, there's no more disruption than if the machines came with 2k loaded instead. Like Skydog, I prefer XP over 2K as there are functional improvements which I miss in 2K, especially the offline domain management for laptops.

John

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I don't believe I'm missing that point at all.

It is not the cost I'm even discussing. It is the fact that corporations that have a vested interest in Windows 2000 Pro may prefer to stay there as opposed to being forced to migrate to yet another platform. It was bad enough having to go from a Primary/Backup domain controller setup to Active Directory, why would they want to have to update their machines to an OS that is bloated with consumer niceties like Windows Movie Maker, MSN Messenger, a fancy Media Player and crap like that? Who wants to have to upgrade 5000 desktops with more hard drive space, more system memory and more intense video requirements when the NT platform you already have works fine for you?

It is very telling that such a high percentage of people prefer to keep their Windows 2000 Pro installations instead of moving to Windows XP.

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I have not seen a single installation that requires anything more than the hardware required for Win2k. Also, most companies will replace most of their computers before an OS is not supported anymore. It's nothing for a company with a contract with Dell or HP to roll out 5000+ computers every 4-5 years with the latest OS.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I don't think asking for continued security patches and key compatibility updates is in any way unreasonable.

That aside, the loss in production migrating to XP from 2K for so little gain could be and appears to be cost prohibitive for many large companies. If they choose to put off the migration even though 2K will lack those key updates, that should tell Microsoft a thing or two.

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It's not cost prohibitive for large companies and have seen two examples first hand where it's part of a schedule to move forward. There really isn't an migration like you reference. It's more like, buy a PC with Win2k, it gets old, buy a PC with WinXp, it will become old and replaced with a new PC with Longhorn, and the schedule continues. Software like Office that updates more frequently is just pushed out over a couple weeks over night.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I don't believe I'm missing that point at all.

It is not the cost I'm even discussing. It is the fact that corporations that have a vested interest in Windows 2000 Pro may prefer to stay there as opposed to being forced to migrate to yet another platform. It was bad enough having to go from a Primary/Backup domain controller setup to Active Directory, why would they want to have to update their machines to an OS that is bloated with consumer niceties like Windows Movie Maker, MSN Messenger, a fancy Media Player and crap like that? Who wants to have to upgrade 5000 desktops with more hard drive space, more system memory and more intense video requirements when the NT platform you already have works fine for you?

It is very telling that such a high percentage of people prefer to keep their Windows 2000 Pro installations instead of moving to Windows XP.

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Most dinks at my work still think the computer box is the "hard drive." They think the word "system" or "case" sounds stupid. Most of these commoners couldn't care less what is running on the system. They just work and go home. Thats the way my office is.

It certainly is much easier to do a staged roll-out than an all-in-one implementation. At least when you buy new machines that come with XP on them, you can pretty much connect them into an NT level network that is built of mostly Win 2k clients without much change.

I have seen a good number of companies, particularly large ones, that are almost anal about having any applications on their client machines that might interfere with productivity in any way. They strip out as many items as they possibly can, including the media player, built in card games, photo wizards, built-in cd burning and stuff like that, in an effort to prevent employees from goofing around on company time. When they compare XP to 2K, they seem to want to stick with 2K.

I'm not against upgrading, just don't dig microsoft kicking me in the pants and pushing me to do it. At least with software, all you have to do is make the patches available and people can download and install them if they want to. There is no huge cost for distribution like there would be with hardware modifications.

Guess I'm just too much of a Windows 2000 Pro fanboy. I really think 2k Pro was perhaps their best OS release ever and am kinda sad to see it being put out to pasture. Looks like I'm a hanger-on-er.

2k pro was a good OS, but XP is better - you say about all this work in stripping XP down, but 2k is just as bad the other way round, you've got to spend a while patching it and updating all the parts it's needing updated with (such as zip support and DX9) There are also other annoying minor things with 2k, it has no quick format in setup, I can build a work ready PC (all apps loaded and ready to go) quite a bit faster with XP than I can with 2k.

John

Why would a corporation want to patch it for zip support or direct x?

Besides, you can push those updates out over Tivoli or whatever method you use.

As for setup, why not just use imaging software like Ghost/Ghost Walker instead of doing each one individually? I can't remember the last time a mid-large size company I worked with relied on manual installs on client machines.

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Originally Posted by Bearded Kirklander

I wonder what it will offer that will make it worth getting?

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I know this is back from Page 1, but my only answer to this is Avalon. an Accelerated GUI.

I think this could actually help the server market as well, where cpu cycles are precious, and forcing the cpu to do all the work of rendering the desktop or whatever can eat up cycles used for other things.

Just my opinion though, I could be horribly wrong.

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Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

There are also other annoying minor things with 2k, it has no quick format in setup

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Really? I always thought it did, in fact I swear I have used the quick format option before installing Windows 2000.

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Originally Posted by James

I know this is back from Page 1, but my only answer to this is Avalon. an Accelerated GUI.

I think this could actually help the server market as well, where cpu cycles are precious, and forcing the cpu to do all the work of rendering the desktop or whatever can eat up cycles used for other things.

Just my opinion though, I could be horribly wrong.

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You might be right if it wasn't for the fact that the server versions of Windows don't have all the 3D effects and other eye candy found in XP. Their desktop is already pretty watered down so that it doesn't use up extra resources.

I wouldn't be surprised if the server version of Longhorn had most of Avalon's flashy features turned off by default. Whether they're being executed by the CPU or graphics card, it's still unnecessary on a server.