“Many companies standardized on Windows NT and Office 97 as their corporate personal computing environment for good reasons. Windows NT 4.0 was touted (by Microsoft) as the most stable, secure OS available. And Office 97 was described as a quantum leap ahead of its predecessors (and competitors). But it’s been six years, and many environments are in dire need of a face-lift.” Read the article at ZDNet.
Making the Case for NT to XP Migration
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Anonymous Aitvo, you can now stop submitting news for today, thanks. I do read ZDNews and ActiveWin, so I know about all the rest of the stories you submitted (not exactly osnews material per se though, or just not too interesting).
This particular one was on TechUpdate though and I hadn’t seen, so thanks for submitting it.
It’s FAKE AITVO! lol
Aside from pointing out that NT/Office 97 is older than XP/Office XP, is there a single compelling reason for a company to spend thousands in upgrade fees, manpower costs, and upgrading to meet more onerous hardware requirements, where the existing kit gets the job done? I can’t think of one.
About the only reason to upgrade from NT is if you have the need to support USB. In a server environment this is unlikely. But to go to XP?? Sheesh, don’t these people read Steve Gibson’s site??? Stick with W2K until they fix the security issues.
The only case I can make for XP over 2K is RDP, of course that’s offset by everything else. Stick with 2K on your desktop, or plan a migration to any BSD or Linux. EVERY OS is going to be touted as the most secure ever, and all the old ones? Well they are crap that we’ll (Microsoft) just hope everyone forgets about.
I found XP much more stable and easy to use than 2k. For servers, I would still recommend 2k over XP PRO, but for a desktop/corporate desktop, XP wins 2k hands down.
security sites out there than steve gibson’s
very smart guy ill agree… but hes known to be a tad excitable and not always on the spot with the facts
My company still runs NT Workstation 4.0 on all of the systems with Office 2000. All of the computers are standardized on this platform, and all run smooth. Don’t see a reason to upgrade at all. USB would be nice, our office digital camera right now is working through a floppy adaptor which is slow…Guess the NT HAL is too hard to hack USB support into it. These people that tell companies that they have to keep upgrading when everything is as productive as hell and bug free are either working for Microsoft or don’t know anything about a business environment. NT 4.0 has been stable as hell, and security is pretty solid in my book…I mean we just run a LAN and everyone in the office had access to most of the machines…
Dano.
USB
You want to be succesful then upgrade ! You want to be left behind then use old software. Just don’t get mad if Microsoft decides not to support it anymore. Progress cost money and you don’t get anywhere without spending a some cash.
Cry for me.
Eugenia: I would never recommend Windows XP or Windows 2000 Professional as a server operating system – it might be useful and stable for running on a workstation. Windows XP is _not_at_all_ designed for running smoothly on a server.
Dano: In the long run, I might agree with you – NT4 still runs quite nice compared to 2K and XP, as long as you needn’t support for fancy USB-printers, -scanners, and -cameras. I’ve been running NT4 Workstation on my desktop system for many years, and Microsoft really did their job on securing the system with (as far as I remember) 7 service packs – under a more friendly license than XP could ever dream of.
—
Anders Østergård
NT works fine even today. As for for Office, there’s nothing really new in XP that isn’t in the 97 version. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ! Why waste hundreds of dollars if you don’t get any real improvement ?
“You want to be succesful then upgrade ! You want to be left behind then use old software. Just don’t get mad if Microsoft decides not to support it anymore. Progress cost money and you don’t get anywhere without spending a some cash.”
Two words: free software
This never-ending upgrade cycle really illustrates what is wrong with relying on Microsoft. You never really own anything or have any durable rights. MS even employs FUD against older versions of their own products to bully companies into forking over some more money for a newer version. Fact is, NT4 was and is a rock-solid operating system, and Office 97 does essentially everything under the sun that could be needed for office productivity. There shouldn’t be any need to pay MS more money to get newer versions that just do the same things. It won’t be long until the free counterparts catch up, and companies can start telling MS to kiss off.
“Fact is, NT4 was and is a rock-solid operating system, and Office 97 does essentially everything under the sun that could be needed for office productivity.”
This is true, until it breaks and you need support. Though to defeat my own argument I can only recall talking to Microsoft’s tech support once, that was over 6 years ago now.
What really frustrates me are companies would rather spend $2M in licensing fees + $53K for an MCSE instead of $39 in licensing fees + $75K for an RHCE to accomplish the same task LOL.
Where my numbers came from:
Windows XP Professional – $108 (OEM, Single PC)
Office XP – $300.00 (Retail)
Systems Engineer – $53,648 (http://www.payscale.com/research/aid-8187/raname-SALARY/rid-ALL)
RedHat Linux – $39.00 (Retail, Unlimited installations)
OpenOffice – $0.00 (FREE)
Systems Engineer – $75,000 (http://www.payscale.com/research/aid-7606/)
Clients: 5,000
Windows solution cost: $2,093,648
Linux solution cost: $75,039
In my mind, the choice is obvious.
“You want to be succesful then upgrade ! You want to be left behind then use old software. Just don’t get mad if Microsoft decides not to support it anymore. Progress cost money and you don’t get anywhere without spending a some cash.”
Reminds me of the “House of Tomorrow” ads in Grand Theft Auto 3: “I didn’t upgrade my personal organizer…two days later I was diagnosed with a terminal illness!”
You want to be succesful then upgrade ! You want to be left behind then use old software. Just don’t get mad if Microsoft decides not to support it anymore. Progress cost money and you don’t get anywhere without spending a some cash.
This is the sort of thinking that is behind a large number of business failures and stagnant growth. Spending money isn’t a solution. Spending money on the right things is. It would be better to spend the money saved by not upgrading on something more useful like staff training, product development, or replacing infrastructure that does need replacement.
Every one here probably knows me as a Linux zealot, but I have my own thoughts on this.
I have to agree that if you are going to use MS office, 97 is STILL the version to use.
I cant comment on excel (personally I think spreadsheets in general and excel in particular are the spawn of the devil), but IMHO word97 and access97 sp2 are probably the zenith of office.
I have developed with both access97 and access2000, and had nothing but problems with 2000.
The only advantage with 2000 is the closer interface with sql server, but aggravation wrt RT is worse than using odbc – you are better off just using web interfaces to SQLServer directly if you are sticking with MS.
And I just find Word2000 horrible in comparison to its older brother – things just have too many breakages.
Finally, theoretically access97 and 2000 are supposed to co-exist, in theory yes. The problem is that 2000 mangles the setup and libraries of 97, (including an horrendous data loss bug)
Aside from pointing out that NT/Office 97 is older than XP/Office XP, is there a single compelling reason for a company to spend thousands in upgrade fees, manpower costs, and upgrading to meet more onerous hardware requirements, where the existing kit gets the job done? I can’t think of one.
I think the answer to that was in the article’s teaser: “…are in dire need of a face-lift.”
Other than prettier icons and a daily visit from the Teletubbies, I can’t fathom a reason to upgrade to Windows XP.
Windows XP is nowhere near as stable as Windows 2000. My new work computers came with Windows XP, but after one losing the registry hive twice and the other one running so slow I ended up working over time just to log on, I formatted the drives and installed Windows 2000. Things have been fine since then.
Office XP is a piece of crap (although it does add some nice features in the Japanese version). I had to write some documentation for a utility program I wrote. I thought that it would be nice to insert some graphics into the document. What a complete joke! Office XP handles and displays graphics about as well as the edlin editor does.
I think companies are better off sticking with either Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. XP needs a lot of work.
See
http://www.mgpinho.hpg.ig.com.br/linux/Como_usar_o_Office_97_no_Lin…
(in portuguese)
If you don’t have a M$ Office 97 license use OppenOffice or LaTeX.
If administered hundreds of NT4 and win2k machines and never once have i had to ring MS support.Any problems if had have been fixed by a quick search on the net or downloading a new driver etc etc.. Who cares if they no longer support the old versions. As long as new hardware i buy still has drivers for NT4 and win2k i cant see any problem. Theres no USB on NT4 of course but that doesnt stop us running it on half our machines. Ive stayed well away from XP because in my opinion its no different to win2k under the hood (MS FUD may say otherwise) and i cant stand the idea of product activation.
I go by the old saying-if it aint broke dont fix it
As fr as the average office user is concerned, no relevant features were added since Word 2 (was it 1992?).
With office2000 this stability, lost in later reease, was found back, at the cost of lots of bloat.
It works fine on my 98 and 95 macihines, in a network with 2000 and NT. Why upgrade?
Even for games in the office, 98 is better. NT works on 64 MB machines without a glitch.
For my one desktop that runs Windows (about 60% of my computer use), NT works fine, so does WordPerfect Suite 2002, OOo, and so does my USB Zip drive and USB flash memory reader. NT DOES do USB, you just have to be willing to hack on it a little to get it to work. I have a replacement machine sitting here however. I have not decided what OS I will be installing yet, er… actually I mean I have not decided which distribution I will be installing. I have used and installed W2K and XP on many occaisions. My corporate desktop enviroment includes Windows 95, 98SE, 2K and XP and I am responsible for installation and support of all of the machines. Until I have answered my aforementioned distro question, there is not a reason to load my Windows machine with anything other than it’s current “Operating System”. I called Microsoft for support one time, back in 1995, I was completely dissatisfied and have never seeked support from them again. In my opinion, Microsoft does not offer “support”. Oh, BTW if XP Activation is something you dislike you can visit my website and click on a couple of links to eliminate the process. If you merely are seeking a “facelift”, I suggest OS X.