Microsoft, hoping to drive greater adoption of its Windows XP operating system, will unveil a new central Web site with revamped tools to help IT administrators make the switch.
Microsoft Pushes XP Switch
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The company I work for has about 200 workstations all running Win2k – AFAIK, there’s not a single solitary reason to switch to XP.
The company I work for has about 200 workstations all running Win2k – AFAIK, there’s not a single solitary reason to switch to XP.
and that is also the same reason why many still use NT 4.0
Why would they switch? The number of apps that wont run on WinXP is huge. The number of apps that wont run on anything but WinXP is just a few.
Win9x/ME was unstable. NT was uncompatible. Win2k was good and stable. WinXP is Win2k with added bloat and sugar coating. Which one would you choose?
By the way, what’s all this pressure from Microsoft telling people to upgrade? Why?
Money.!! From your wallet into their wallet
“Win9x/ME was unstable. NT was uncompatible. Win2k was good and stable. WinXP is Win2k with added bloat and sugar coating. Which one would you choose?”
Dito for MS OFFICE products!
Dan
MS have 40 Billion in the bank…how much is it worth to have more switchers?
I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person who would think that’s a good idea.
…Windows NT 4 was unstable, Windows 2000 hides the instability and has compatability problems with Win9x applications, XP is alien.
Which one of these is secure, out of the box?
If somebody asked me if they should switch OS’s at this time, I’d say either don’t bother, or see if you can find something better for your Corporate Offices.
It’s time for us to stop depending on one guy for everything on the computer.
NT 3.5 was pretty ok. If I recall correctly, it was written by the author of OpenVMS (which Mitnick claimed was the only OS he could not break into) but for NT 4.0, they let the Win95 coders on board and that’s what sunk that battleship. The NT kernel itself has some very nice ideas in it. It’s the outside software that sucks. Call me crazy but Win 3.11 was the first Win I used and it’s still my favourite when it comes to overall look
On the other hand, Linux seems to have less compatibility problems than WinXP with older software. And that seems to be a good thing.
Hey Chuck, why don’t you tell us a BSOD joke.
“Windows 2000 hides the instability”
It does this by pretending to be stable?
Linux seems to have less compatibility problems than WinXP with older software
What? Linux breaks binary compatibility with almost every single release (weeks). You can run code on windows that is almost 10 years old.
If only Linux could deliver on half the hype that it’s following (cult) preaches we would have world peace and live in a utopian society.
We have found no reason to switch from win2k. Win2k was worth the upgrade from NT4.0. It was quite a big leap from NT4.0. Windows XP is just win2k with extra crap. As long as the latest software runs on win2k and the latest hardware comes with drivers for win2k why would anyone want to upgrade? Hell most new hardware comes with drivers for NT4.0 (barring USB hardware of course). Having to upgrade windows every 12 months is FUD that Linux zealots spread. Its also FUD that MS spreads when a new version comes out. But they are in the business of selling software so that is thier push.
In reality most people can get by just fine on a 4 or 5 year old version of windows.
And theres no reason you have to get railroaded into MS Office. Running Staroffice or Openoffice on Windows is a great alternative. We run Openoffice and Mozilla on NT4.0 and win2k and it works great.
Despite the “Server” in the name, I wonder how well Windows 2003 Server will act as a workstation OS, if the price permits.
I agree that after working with an almost-completely Windows 2000 network using AD to administer most things, it is extremely easy and nice to use. However, with the couple of Windows XP Professional machines there were, I never had any problems. Mind you, this was administering from Windows 2000, too! The “Manage” feature works wonders and allows you to do all sorts of great things. One has to remember that Windows XP is even closer to Windows 2000 in terms of networking than Windows 2000 was to Windows NT! For now, I don’t think that there is a point in upgrading all of those 1.5gHz Dells from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, however I would say that for new computer purchases it’s a good idea.
This means that in a year or two, most of the professors will be running Windows XP Professional (except for those crazy Econ. people who need to use UNIX or some other non-Windows OS for those amazingly complex FORTRAN/PASCAL calculation programs), the network administrators will be running Windows XP, however the IT department will run all secondary and tertiary computers with Windows 2000 (I’ve used Windows 2000 and Office 2000 on a 233 mHz PII with 128 megabytes of RAM and it ran good enough for anybody…even with Winamp playing in the background!), the older PCs in the labs and other places will be using Windows 2000, and then that one little lonely computer on the third floor will still be running Windows 3.11. 😉
Okay, so I believe I have rambled on detailing one university’s situation long enough, so I’ll get to the point: Windows 2000 is good enough to administer Win2k, NT 4.0 (although in a year I doubt that more than two or three little-used computers will be using it), and Windows XP Pro. I cannot vouch for administering from XP Pro, but as far as I can tell it uses the same “Manage” feature, and that should be suffecient. As for compatibility, this is an issue for some niche applications (although I think that many of them will update with the times), but not worthy of holding back an entire department’s operating system choice.
i don’t want XP , i don’t care if Billy Boy Borg Gates says he will stand on his head til his ears are turning red “I DONT WANT IT”
the Penguin & I (till the wheels fall off)
got /root
if Billy Boy Borg Gates says he will stand on his head til his ears are turning red
That would be quite amusing… Talk about marketing… Microsoft could completely wipe out the competition with such an aggressive move.
I can’t believe you even suggested it…
*** Pictures Bill Gates Upside Down with red ears… wait. wait… It’s Seven of Nine now… ooooh.
Disaster for OSS.
“Despite the “Server” in the name, I wonder how well Windows 2003 Server will act as a workstation OS, if the price permits”
ran a win2003 ent. server through the customer preview program since last summer as a workstation – no major difference compared with XP. A little plus side – it could be put to hibernation state in an RDP session. On XP, I have to write a small program to do the same.
the machine running it is a celeron 300 on a 440LX based motherboard with 192 MB of SDRAM.
one major upside of XP/win2003 is the RDP – with 16 bit color and remote sound, it “feels” light years ahead of win2k.
those crazy Econ. people who need to use UNIX or some other non-Windows OS for those amazingly complex FORTRAN/PASCAL calculation programs)<P>
Define a green, uneducated Windows admin:<BR>
That’d be one who defines PASCAL (an educational language) as an “amazingly complex language”<P>
I am *so* glad that you are not on my network, where we use gcc, ssh, Solaris, Linux, and – oh, some freaks use Windows, and we do our best to accomodate them, bless ’em
Can we have threaded comments some time soon, please, so I can direct comments such as the above at the right people, not the (hopefully more intelligent) Windows admins who read this site…
I am *so* glad that you are not on my network, where we use gcc, ssh, Solaris, Linux, and – oh, some freaks use Windows, and we do our best to accomodate them, bless ’em
Good for you! Do you also use tex instead of a word processor too? and for you info fortran is a great language for scientific formula resolving, just go to wikipedia.com and read about it with your favorite browser, wich i guess is lynx 😛 Pffffff
We’re using XP Pro on our corporate LAN. IT BLOWS CHOW. When using Word or Excel on a network drive, it leaves files open due to a file locking/attributes problem in shell32.dll even after exiting the app. IMHO, this is a major, show stopper bug (Q328170 in their knowledgebase). There is NO way they can justify a bug like this in an OS and then call it “their most secure and reliable OS ever”. Their motiavtion for releasing software is quarterly and not quality related. Obviously, they just don’t care what they release.