“So, what do I think of Windows 2003 Server? Well, I feel that Microsoft has hit a home run. During my corporation’s evaluation of Windows 2003 Server, we have found that the benefits are extremely enticing. We will not be suggesting this to all of our customers for a few months, but we will start to roll it out immediately.” Read the review at ActiveWin.
Windows 2003 Server Review at ActiveWin
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Is this guy for real? My God, every day I think that my respect for Microsoft has hit a new low, and somehow, in some way, some new report, some new bug – or in this case some new zealot – makes me realize what an unprofessional thing MS Windows and related products are.
I’ll be brief as I have to run, but…
” Enter our Hero!!! Windows 2003 Server!!! ”
This guy sounds like a flaming idiot already. Details that make this fact self evident soon arise:
“It was relatively easy to lock down a 2000 Server, but you had to actually have to go in and tighten everything manually, leaving room for human error.”
Welcome to the real world son. I manage a cluster of varied UNIX machines (BSD’s, linux, et al); you cannot truly be a competent admin if you balk at the prospect of having to manually tweak little things on a production server. We have not devised – nor will we in any reasonably close age – AI; the true brains behind computational systems is the human operator.
OS NEWS, I beg of you to more closely filter the articles posted. I have great respect for this website, but articles posted by people who clearly have no long background in what the speak of, degrade the quality of the site.
Cheers!
Pararox
The web based administration component of Win2k3s is actually the windows SAK kit with the SAK logo changed. You can download the SAK for free if you search for it on M$’s site. It was made for win2k. It’s not all that either. I’d say it is equivalent to a stripped down version of Webmin.
Talk about ignorance being bliss.
The article was good enough for publication. Sure, it is not perfect and you might not agree with everything, but this article does give quite some information about Windows Server 2003. If you want to learn more, we do accept articles and reviews for publication on OSNews, as always. Sit down, write a better one and we will publish it.
Microsoft releases a new version of a server edition of windows thats a step in the right direction and people balk at it. Some PFY figures out how to change fonts in Mozilla on RH9.0 in n00b linux review and you’d swear it was the second comming around here.
2003 will be the same old garbage. Windows as we currently know it is a lost cause; they should start from ‘scratch’ as Apple did with OSX, or just pack it in.
Take that donkey ball-sac out of your mouth Bill.
>2003 will be the same old garbage
Windows has come a long way my friend. 2k, XP and 2003 have nothing to do with Win9x/ME.
I run XP PRO for 13 months now on a lowly dual celeron 533 with 256 MB RAM, and it runs great. I have not experienced a single crash.
PararoX writes…
OS NEWS, I beg of you to more closely filter the articles posted. I have great respect for this website, but articles posted by people who clearly have no long background in what the speak of, degrade the quality of the site.
If the web posts trash…you get trash. Honestly the web is one big advertisement. I am just glad that OSNEWS keeps me up to date with that trash.
If anything I would like to see step by step howto on how to do things.
eg. If a review has a review on an extreme alternative OS, how about a step by step for the install, and what you can currently do with that OS.
Anyway blah blah getting offtopic.
Also MS Windows doesn’t need to be rewritten, it is a good architecture and yes it is modular. It just too much integrated in the application layer (win32, etc). Just like KDE is. <<AGAIN OFFTOPIC: how come with KDE you can’t just install a single KDE app without it being part of a greater package, well that is how MS Windows is, so don’t ever ridicule windows for the same reason, ridicule it for other things
>>
I’ve never had the pleasure (or unbelievable displeasure) of using any of the Windows Server Editions much but I can’t understand how they can expect customers to choose how many clients they want to allow access based on price. Just to get a directory server, you have to pay a phenomenal amount of money and then it only allows 5, or 25 (if you have the $$$) clients. With samba, I run a Windows Domain for FREE with relative ease as can many others. I can understand that people might be prepared to tolerate these shortcomings if Microsoft produced a good product, and no, new features is not the only requirement. Poor security is just plain intolerable. I cannot believe how much some of us are willing to accept. Add to this, an annoying licencing scheme whereby you’ve bought the product, but you still can’t use it without further interaction with the company.
I don’t personally buy commercial software but I do agree that if these people want to, they should be able to enforce copying. Surely though, there must be a more effective and less annoying way to go about it. Windows XP activation was cracked when the product was still in beta. As for 2003, I’m sure it was a similar story.
12 months down the track, we will see how many security advisories 2003 has had, then I think we’ll all have a better picture.
I have not experienced a single crash.
I had Windows XP installed on a Dual Athlon MP 1600 on a Tyan motherboard for 2 days. With the latest Tyan and NVidia drivers and no additional hardware, it crashed roughly once an hour. Windows 2000 and Redhat (7.3 and 8.0) work fine on the same machine.
I’ve had no crashed with Windows XP on my AMD K6-2 laptop though. My main problem with both 2K and XP is that I get bored of the look and feel, and think Explorer is a second-rate desktop environment. Yeah, you can replace it with things like Litestep, but you’re stuck with ugly Explorer as the file manager.
However, that’s rather off-topic as we’re talking about a server operating system here, and not a desktop environment. I’ve not used Windows servers much, and from what I’ve seen recently (Windows 2000 servers) they’re fairly stable as long as you don’t run IIS.
Does Windows Server 2003 still have that annoying problem where if one process has a file open, another process cannot edit or delete the file? I’ve always found that to be really annoying, and will stick to using nothing but Unix, Linux, and maybe a Mac until they fix that.
Standard Edition – $1199 – Includes 10 CALs
Enterprise Edition – $3999 – Includes 25 CALs
I run the network at a company where there are ~ 15 client machines on the network and only 8 employees.
The costs of the Windows Server series are ridiculous for a small enterprise like ours.
They are forcing us to switch. And, to be honest, the more I experience Linux and BSD and their progress, the more I want to switch.
‘Does Windows Server 2003 still have that annoying problem where if one process has a file open, another process cannot edit or delete the file? I’ve always found that to be really annoying, and will stick to using nothing but Unix, Linux, and maybe a Mac until they fix that.’
Maybe you should ask the application developer to fix that problem, since winapi has always allowed a variety of standard locked and shared file access methods, and in addition, multi-level opportunistic locks, filter & cmd batch locking. Every language on windows has access to these functions. You just have to read the documentation.
>Windows XP activation was cracked when the product was >still in beta. As for 2003, I’m sure it was a similar >story.
Of course it’s been cracked, do a serach in the right places and you’ll find it. Do MS care, probably not, kids pirating Server 2003 just means a they’ll grow up into Windows Server whatever admins. And adults aren’t dumb enough to do it, at least not in industry cause you’ll have to pay the MS tax anyway when they find you.
i often hear that evrbody run win2000 2003 servers witouth crashes and downtime. well it to soon to say yet is wat i say when i deploy a bsd server i minimu excpects an uptime on 2year but even that is small some vms boxen has been running for 10 year+ without reboots. come back in 8 years and tell me
“Of course it’s been cracked, do a serach in the right places and you’ll find it. Do MS care, probably not, kids pirating Server 2003 just means a they’ll grow up into Windows Server whatever admins. And adults aren’t dumb enough to do it, at least not in industry cause you’ll have to pay the MS tax anyway when they find you.”
In Australia (which I assume you’re in based on your *.au domain), around 40% of businesses used unlicenced software. Whether it is cracked or not is immaterial.
have i missed something?
or have all the new and exciting features in Server 2003 been available in linux for quite a while now, all without the costs and other ‘features’ common to M$. . .
Maybe you should try to use Windows Explorer. It chokes on open files.
Maybe you should try the Windows command shell. It chokes on open files.
The ‘open file’ problem has been a big issue for Windows NT for a long time. It is not handled well in Microsoft’s own software. Ever try copying a hierarchy of files only to find some file somewhere in the tree is open? Did you note the non-existent error recovery?
I’m sure if Microsoft surfaced some of the rather hidden API’s that backup software uses to backup open files, application developers, including Microsoft’s own application developers, would have a much better chance at writing robust software. But face it, Microsoft has such a swamp of API’s now, it is impossible to determine which API to use and why. Furthermore, Microsoft has been horrible about documenting which internal API’s the C/C++ RTL uses.
Yes, of course, in deference to the above comments, he is a MS fanboy.
However, where I work, we still have a number of WinNT servers and clients. I’ve been discussing with the other network folks about what we should do with those machines. We use an NT domain and WINS internally. We have a few file/print servers running NT4, which is just getting ponderous to deal with. I’d been considering setting up Samba servers running Linux or FreeBSD to replace them. 2k3 is looking more interesting, however. And, all in all, the price consideration isn’t *that* bad. For me, since I am the only real Unix admin in the office, not adding five or six more servers to my workload is an attractive option. The competent MS people can continue to admin those boxes (they can only do basic things on the Unix boxes…..adding users, changing passwords, killing e-mail messages stuck in the queue).
Where MS does kill you is when you decide to be a MS-only shop. I’ve migrated our proxy from MS Proxy Server 2.0 on NT4 (few security fixes anymore….they want you to buy the new product, and no support for clients other than windows….we’ve got several Macs and me with my weird assortment of personal machines….) to a machine running Debian and Squid. We’ve also moved our e-mail service in-house, from a service that was costing us quite a bit per month. That machine, too, is running Debian. The total cost on that move was about two hundred bucks (probably less than what we were paying the other company per month), which was the cost for a couple of big drives to put in a computer that wasn’t being used in the office.
I don’t know if MS has hit a “home run” here like the reviewer said, but I know that as far as I’m concerned, it’s back in the game for our office.
Maybe you should try to use Windows Explorer. It chokes on open files.
Maybe you should try the Windows command shell. It chokes on open files.
Maybe you should try to read what Kon said. In short, he said it’s the programmers responsability to choose the locking method. Do you want that freedom removed?
(And of course, if Windows Explorer or Command Prompt could “unlock” the locked files then they wouldn’t be truly locked, would they?)
Saying something is the fault of the “application programmer” is just a cop out when the software in question is part of the operating system.
Since the Windows source code is not generally available, I cannot fix the many bugs that are readily apparent in many parts of the OS.
If Explorer could COPY an open file or even DELETE an open file, then the application programmer could work with that. However, the application programmer never gets a chance, because Explorer just bombs out when it encounters an open file.
And note we are talking just about the surface of Microsoft’s file handling problems here. There are so many API’s that all work differently that it is very easy for the application programmer to make a mistake, especially as the API’s are not well documented.
Any new interesting paragraphs in the EULA?
This is a comman problem and i had this many times. The file can’t be deleted/moved even if you restart the system. I wasn’t even able to delete the file from another windows system. The only way (i found) to delete it is terminating explorer, then use RUN to start the command promp(cmd) and delete the file with the del command.
Are those “interesting” articles about Win2003 real? I mean is MS paying for them? are just mere advertisement?
I really wonder im MS is behind those articles, no single one of them seems to be impartial. In all of the articles I have read so far Win2003 is so marvellous I should run to install it.
I’m not an anti MS advocate, but I’m starting to think Win2003 is more of the same and all of those articles are just a marketing campaign.
But that’s crazy. You look at the cost of hiring your employee, and you find that you’ve got recruitment fees (say, 10% – 20% of salary), PCs (2 on average, in your case), legals etc, all of which amounts to, say, $10,000, of which server software licensing is a drop in the ocean.
That’s not to say that there might not be benefits in non-commercial software to your organization, but ‘cost’ is a really weak argument in a small company, where the license fee is a tiny part of the cost-centre.
Thanks, Michael. I was about to use the explorer and command line tools example. This problem is not one with the API, but they way Windows itself handles open files. Possibly a limitation of the filesystem. I don’t know for sure.
What about this text-based configuration I have been hearing about? Not that it would do much good if the default editor is still EDIT and the shell is still CMD, but it’s a start…
Can you finally add IP addresses to the machine without rebooting? I added an IP to a 2000 server last week, and IIS promptly shut down all services and wouldn’t let me restart them until I restarted the machine.
Looks like the bar for domain participation is NT 4.0 > SP3. I wonder if you do meet that requirement with NT how smoothly things run.
Does Samba/CIFS still work with this?
And finally, is Windows 2003 Server ready for the Desktop?
It is a free(?)commercial. We don’t need osnews for this. You’ll find plenty on http://www.microsoft.com …
>> Can you finally add IP addresses to
>> the machine without rebooting?
You can do that in XP, so I would assume it would be the same for future windows systems.
I’ve been running a copy of Windows 2003 for around a week and talk about a disappointment. Firstly, I cannot log in unless I have a CD in my CDR. If I don’t have a CD in my CDR drive, it just hangs there and doesn’t load.
The CLI is still pathetic, and I am being generous in my description. I swear I had more functions with my BBC Micro than I have with Windows 2003. As for those who some how think that getting certified as a Window 2003 “guru” is going to help you get a job, you might as well join the “send $5 to these five people”, you’d have better luck with that scheme.
Then goes onto my modem, same problem as Windows 2000, dials up, then suddenly stops and doesn’t continue, yet, when I was running FreeBSD 4.8, with all the initialisation strings from the Windows inf, everything worked perfectly.
As for what my requirements are, they simple. I want stability and security. Speed is a second issue to those two priorities. It is the old story, have two but not all three.
I just tried copying an file opened with write access with Windows Explorer and it works. You can even write to it (tried UltraEdit).
HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(“test”,GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_ALWAYS, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
However, if I specify that the file may not be read/written by other processes, like this:
HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(“test”,GENERIC_WRITE, 0, NULL, OPEN_ALWAYS, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
then of course it can’t be copied by Windows Explorer.
Please show your claim that Windows Explorer can’t copy open files.
Upon the release of NT4.0
“So, what do I think of NT4.0 Server? Well, I feel that Microsoft has hit a home run. During my corporation’s evaluation of NT4.0 Server, we have found that the benefits are extremely enticing. We will not be suggesting this to all of our customers for a few months, but we will start to roll it out immediately.”
Upon the release of W2K Server
“So, what do I think of W2K Server? Well, I feel that Microsoft has hit a home run. During my corporation’s evaluation of W2K Server, we have found that the benefits are extremely enticing. We will not be suggesting this to all of our customers for a few months, but we will start to roll it out immediately.”
Upon the release of .Net
“So, what do I think of .Net? Well, I feel that Microsoft has hit a home run. During my corporation’s evaluation of .Net, we have found that the benefits are extremely enticing. We will not be suggesting this to all of our customers for a few months, but we will start to roll it out immediately.”
Upon the release of Windows 2003 Server
“So, what do I think of Windows 2003 Server? Well, I feel that Microsoft has hit a home run. During my corporation’s evaluation of Windows 2003 Server, we have found that the benefits are extremely enticing. We will not be suggesting this to all of our customers for a few months, but we will start to roll it out immediately.”
Different sandwich, same old sh*t.
I begin to realize that Microsoft has done almost Zero innovation. If you don’t believe me about their lack of innovation check out this: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.shtml — These guys actually try to prove that Microsoft is innovating at least SOMETHING. They don’t go into a lot of technical stuff, but it’s interesting none the less.
As one of you already pointed out the new services in Windows 2003 have been available in Linux for awhile now. The thing that truly amazes me though is when I boot up that brand new version of Windows and everything just looks the same. Certainly looks aren’t everything, and they’ve done plenty of backend work, but in a community like that of Linux developers we have mass amounts of people working…. then again Microsoft also has mass amounts of people working. However, noticed that in the Linux community we see a multitude of projects all undergoing their own innovation. Backed stuff is handled mostly by kernel and system utility developers, while frontend is handled by projects such as KDE, Gnome, all the other environments/window managers and managment systems.
My friend had gotten a copy of a beta version of 2003. I laughed because it was using the old 9x/ME/2k/XP Classic interface, but in all the little monitors where they showed you desktop for configuration the screen showed the Fisher Price XP interface. It was great… does the final cut still do this? After about 10 minutes I just broke into laughter, thinking about what I could actually SEE that was new… the answer was not so surprisingly: nothing.
As I said, I’m certain they’ve done plenty of back end work, but for the number of employees they have and the money they have to spend the prospect of limitless innovation should be told quite easily on the Windows platform. It’s almost as if each new version is a simple remix of the old with a couple more bundled management packages and a new kernel. Granted some Linux Distributions aren’t much better. The difference, however, is that your Linux experience doesn’t end with the company that produced your Disto. From that point on you are in full control of your OS and the thousands and thousands of options out there for alternative and possibly better software is at your fingertips. Windows freeware is about as useful as a mule with one leg and a .45 calibar gunshot wound to the head. Most of the commercial apps available are overpriced and only comparible to other commercial apps of the same type.
Choice and Microsoft just don’t seem to go together, much like the idea of Innovation and Microsoft… but at least it made me laugh.
I love how when there’s a review of some Linux desktop distribution and people complain it doesn’t work the same as Windows the Linux crew comes out saying it’s not Windows, you should learn how to use it. But, when a Windows Server OS comes out that same Linux crew is in here saying you can do this in Linux but not in Windows. It’s the same argument only the reverse. A graphical OS is what Windows is, even the server version. So how come the Linux crew always wants it to be command line driven and have the same commands as Linux. It’s a different OS, learn to use it.
just add the IP, disable the connection and then re-enable it. You’re back in the game
So how come the Linux crew always wants it to be command line driven and have the same commands as Linux.
Command-line tools work better on a remote machine over a slow network connection than graphical ones do.
Yeah, it rocks.
You can c>del c:windows*.* and all problems are solved! All in one line! Isn’t that great?
Do yourself a favor and install *Linux or *BSD.
n0dez
This article just highlights marketing bullet points! I doubt this guy has had experience with anything other than MS products.
And in a way I think thats the problem with microsoft, most microsoft people don’t know enough about computer technology to make an accurate evaluation. (Of course I am not talking about Eugenia!)
…If not, someone else has their head even further up Microsoft’s buttock!
Vic
The review is fine…Can’t you all deal with the fact Microsoft is better than all Linux products, etc.?
Nice flamebait!! ;o)
“Welcome to the real world son. I manage a cluster of varied UNIX machines (BSD’s, linux, et al); you cannot truly be a competent admin if you balk at the prospect of having to manually tweak little things on a production server. We have not devised – nor will we in any reasonably close age – AI; the true brains behind computational systems is the human operator.”
True, but I’ve admin’ed Unix, Novell, and Windows systems (NT 4, and 2000), and I STILL don’t like how the default security is set up on the Windows machines. Besides, I’m still seeing app consultants and in-house software engineers release software for those platforms where a locked-down computer won’t properly install software from the super-user level. In general, I’ve very rarely seen that problem on Linux or Novell (NLM) setups; installing most applications works fine as super-user, and then regular users have the right permissions (or need to get them.)
E.G. Newly created filesystems should be locked down by default, not completely open. If 2003 server does this, I applaud them. If 2003 server will let superuser install applications properly, by default, because the application developers know how to work superuser privileges correctly, then I applaud them.
Oh…and if Windows 2003 has the 24X7 issue solved, I applaut them. But I’ll wait until I see those multi-year uptimes to decide that. (i.e. “Windows needs to restart your computer….” every time you sneeze at it.)
Yeah and when I log in as root, I can rm -rf /. But if I’m not root, I can restrict access to that. Same thing if I don’t log in as administrator under windows.
What an ignorant observation you made.
Same observation for the ‘windows sucks because I can’t figure out its APIs or its file locking mechanism’. If files are locked with no shared access you should *not* be able to delete them. I don’t even remotely get the ‘I tagged some open files and couldn’t delete them in explorer’ line. Are you saying you *want* to crash the application that has specifically locked them for access? Nevermind that the excuse of ‘the application at fault is explorer’ is bogus. It didn’t create the file. As for the files locked on reboot – thats another application problem where the developer has not hooked a system shutdown and closed the file gracefully.
I’m no winblows fan, but I hate it when people just make sweeping statements with no factual basis.
From this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/whyupgrade/to…
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
7. Command-Line Management
The Windows Server 2003 family provides a significantly enhanced command-line infrastructure, letting administrators perform most management tasks without using a graphical user interface. Of special importance is the ability to perform a wide range of tasks by accessing the information store enabled by Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This WMI command-line (WMIC) feature provides a simple command-line interface that interoperates with existing shells and utility commands and can be easily extended by scripts or other administration-oriented applications.
Overall, the greater command-line functionality in the Windows Server 2003 family, combined with ready-to-use scripts, rivals the power of other operating systems often associated with higher cost of ownership. Administrators accustomed to using the command line to manage UNIX or Linux systems can continue managing from the command line in the Windows Server 2003 family. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Anyone who has used WS2003 care to comment on the above feature?
has been around for a while now.. you can install it off the XP cd..
Oh my, yet another Anti-Windows-Flamewar… face it, Windows-n00bs are not better than Linux-n00bs. If they don’t know how to do something, they complain it doesn’t work. The stuff some people here are talking about kind of reminds me of http://www.btinternet.com/%7Ewoofgbr/support3.gif just a level higher.
I’m no server administrator. I’m no Linux-g33k. I’m no office user. I’m that particular type of teenager using his PC to explore what it can do. I have used Linux (SuSE 7.1 and Mandrake 9.0), FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, AtheOS/Syllable, SkyOS, MenuetOS and everything else I could find. I have used Windows versions from 0.9 to Longhorn, and not a single one was hard to live with, let alone difficult to use. I don’t have tried Me for long and 98 was no son of stability, but I could use it for years (at the desktop here) to do whatever I want. Then I switched to XP and got even more excited. I have done a lot of things with my XP machine and faced quite some problems, but I learned to get into it and solve them. Windows, particularly the NT series, is, when properly configured, stable, fast and reliable.
Windows is slow, unstable, crashing? Ever tried disabling services you don’t need, configuring IRQs properly, disabling the eye-candy you hate so much (maybe even remove the whole skinning engine from the OS – it is possible) or running it without Explorer.exe (if you have a server, why don’t you do that to gain 30 MB of RAM, a bit of CPU usage and stability?). I bet you don’t know most of the features Windows can come up with. Who said in Windows you have to use Explorer as the file manager? What made you think that, the errors when you tried to delete explorer.exe?
People jump at Linux because it’s difficult to use. Linux-users say you have to learn it and get used to it. People jump at Windows because they have problems with simple tasks “Windows is unable to do”. So be it. I don’t dare to tell you that you have to look for a solution to eventually find it, because you know sooo much more about computers, I’m a Windows user anyway, so I don’t even have a clue what I’m talking about. Is this what you were thinking right now?
Well okay, I’m satisfied now. I think I’ll go read the comments to one of those “Linux is ready for the desktop” articles to read some Anti-Linux-flames…
As Eugenia and the rest of the OSNews staff can probably see, I am running Windows 2003 Server. I won’t write what I like about it because first of all, not much has changed for the better, and second of all, there are enough reviews out there by people who are titillated to near incapacitation by anything Microsoft, who I’m sure can provide such plesantries.
What I am offering is an overview of my first day (yesterday) of running Windows Server 2003. Also, since I’m sure somebody will ask regarding my machine, it is a Pentium4 2Ghz machine with 512MB RAM, an NVidia GeForce4 Card and a shload of hard drive space.
The first thing I noticed was that, probably due to Microsoft’s new “Security” initiative, IE was set to the maximum security settings. What this means is that every page you visit will prompt you with a security warning and ask you to accept or not to accept the web page as a trusted site. After three web pages (all MSDN pages), I turned this feature off since it is highly irritating.
The second thing I noticed was the tight integration of Passport in IE. I have an MSDN Subscription that I access online (which is where I downloaded WS2003). I went there to download Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the accompanying MSDN Library. Instead of simply offering a login screen, you have to go through a wizard which attempts to connect your Windows machine with your passport login. You can say no if you’d like, but I think a better option would be to provide a link to the wizard if you were so inclined, and provide a simple log in for those who aren’t interested in Passport. I found this irritating as well.
The third thing I noticed was that while dowloading from the internet, Windows refreshes the screen every second or so. This is especially noticeable in Windows Explorer. The tree view was constantly repainting and therefore constantly flickering. It was like staring at a strobe light. The desktop also flickered during this download process, but it was not quite as bad. The most irritating and unforgivable problem with downloading large files is that the Windows common file dialog no longer works. Because the contents of the hard drive are changing as you are downloading files, and because Microsoft wants to update that information for you every second on the second, you had better be quick with the common file dialog’s drop down list box because it is going to close on you every second. For mere mortals, this “feature” renders the common file dialog useless until your download has completed (which is quite a while if you are downloading VS.NET and the MSDN Library). This “feature” is not present in any other version of Windows I’ve used, with the possible exception of XP.
The forth, and last thing I’ll mention here, was IIS. With the new “security” push at Microsoft, they have added an extra feature in IIS which in a nutshell says “ignore all those other security settings your accustomed to setting in IIS because as long as I’m set, nothing will work”. It’s like if your car manufacturer found that their door locks were easy to pick, so to make your car more secure, they encased it in lead free of charge. It’s the same mentality.
Instead of fixing the security issues that exist in IIS, and other parts of Windows, they basically throw on these uninspired, huge bandages that EVERYONE is going to disable because if you don’t, your machine is utterly useless. Where is the benefit or innovation in that?
Oh, one more thing I just remembered. With Windows Server 2003, if you want to shutdown or reboot your machine, you’d better prepare to be interrogated. After installing VS.NET (which requires a reboot) I was a bit surprised to have Windows ask me why I was rebooting the machine. It wouldn’t let me continue until I answered a couple of canned questions with canned answeres. I fail to grasp the point of this. If your going to ask the same questions and offer the same choices of answers, what information do you gain and how does this make your OS more secure? Everybody is going to take the defaults and reboot anyway, so what’s the point other than to be another pain in the butt, obtrusive, irritating feature that proves, in some derranged way, that your company is being “security” conscious?
While there are some nice things about Windows Server 2003, in a nutshell, I find using Windows Server 2003 to be the equivalent of Windows 2000 with the addition of about 300 circus hoops. Most of the new features (especially the security ones) are stupid in concept and implementation.
I just want to see, How Windows Server 2003 can beat Linux w.r.to cost, scalability and work load.????
I would say that the comparisons would be the same as Windows 2000 server. Not much has changed functionally.
…Unless of course you factor in the time it will take to disable all the dumb “security” features. Then 2000 probably has a better TCO.
Let me renege on my previous claim to refrain from saying anything nice. I just ran into one feature that I think is very nice. Unlike other versions of Windows, when you install new software, Windows 2003 Server (sorry, I had it backwards before) automagically places it in the correct order alphabetically in the start menu (I always wondered why they didn’t do this before). Thanks MS.
Side 1:
“While there are some nice things about Windows Server 2003, in a nutshell, I find using Windows Server 2003 to be the equivalent of Windows 2000 with the addition of about 300 circus hoops. Most of the new features (especially the security ones) are stupid in concept and implementation.”
Side 2:
“Let me renege on my previous claim to refrain from saying anything nice. I just ran into one feature that I think is very nice. Unlike other versions of Windows, when you install new software, Windows 2003 Server (sorry, I had it backwards before) automagically places it in the correct order alphabetically in the start menu (I always wondered why they didn’t do this before). Thanks MS.”
Damn! This is so typical of that company. This is like buying an expensive designer “wide” chest-of-drawers, ogling at how pretty it is, and then swearing at it for the rest of your life, when you’re busy trying to get ready for work, because you can’t open the two-handle drawers with one handle. Or when you pull out a drawer to recover something that fell behind (or all the drawers to move it,) and get 20 slivers because they didn’t sand and finish the inside.
Of course, most people won’t be able to *open* the “MS-Drawers(tm)” without signing that they won’t GPL any of it…..so they won’t know about the billions of slivers they could get…..
Does Windows Server 2003 still have that annoying problem where if one process has a file open, another process cannot edit or delete the file?
always had, probably always will. But I’m working on a hack to disable that behavior by patching the kernel at runtime
Possibly a limitation of the filesystem. I don’t know for sure.
Nope, an arbitrary limitation imposed by the I/O subsystem.If you don’t pass FILE_SHARE_DELETE to CreateFile-> NtCreateFile-> IoCreateFile, the FILE_OBJECT is created with its ShareDelete flag set to FALSE, so any future request to open the file for DELETE access will fail with a status of STATUS_SHARING_VIOLATION, without ever asking the filesystem about it
A (possible) conceptual flaw is that you have to open the file for DELETE access and operate on it, rather than opening its containing directory for FILE_DELETE_CHILD access and pass the name of the entry to remove. I say “possible” because, in fact, the only way to delete a file is to unlink it, so requiring DELETE access to unlink isn’t entirely illogical. It’s just FILE_SHARE_DELETE that doesn’t make sense – it should be always set
>> Standard Edition – $1199 – Includes 10 CALs
>> Enterprise Edition – $3999 – Includes 25 CALs
>> I run the network at a company where there are ~ 15
>> client machines on the network and only 8 employees.
You’re a perfect candidate for the new “per user” licensing that Microsoft is offering with 2003 then. You’ll do fine with the 10 CAL license. Previously, licensing was either per seat or by total connections.
It’s important to keep in mind that there is a time and place for everything. I’m an IT Director for a legal association. Our external presence/web site is all based on Linux and other open source tools and will continue to be handled that way. Our internal infrastructure is almost 100% Microsoft. Why? When new employees come on board, they know Outlook, Word/WordPerfect, Windows, etc. In addition, we have a number of applications that are Windows-only and I don’t want to mess around with WINE trying to get them working — they are critical to our operation and “almost” won’t cut it. In addition, my IT staff is experienced with Windows (and much more capable than simple point and click stuff).
Have I considered Linux internally? Absolutely. Will I roll it out? Probably not in the near future. Windows Server 2003 with the upcoming Exchange 2003 will help me to provide a better level of service to my users. Could I do it with open source tools. Yes — if I wanted to find a point product for every problem.
One of the areas where Microsoft (not surprisingly) excels is in integration — ie — their products work well with each other. That’s an important factor when trying to keep users productive.
I’m not an MS whore by any means — I’ve worked with NetWare and Linux as much as I have with Windows. It’s simply a matter of using the right tool for the job.
Scott
You are so right we only have to look at the next post to see that people don’t bother to learn how to use things.
“Oh, one more thing I just remembered. With Windows Server 2003, if you want to shutdown or reboot your machine, you’d better prepare to be interrogated. After installing VS.NET (which requires a reboot) I was a bit surprised to have Windows ask me why I was rebooting the machine. It wouldn’t let me continue until I answered a couple of canned questions with canned answeres. I fail to grasp the point of this. If your going to ask the same questions and offer the same choices of answers, what information do you gain and how does this make your OS more secure? Everybody is going to take the defaults and reboot anyway, so what’s the point other than to be another pain in the butt, obtrusive, irritating feature that proves, in some derranged way, that your company is being “security” conscious?”
You wouldn’t be using a server OS as a desktop OS would you? I’d bet that some people might like that feature, like people who run big servers, I don’t really know? But did you know you can turn it off? go here http://home.triad.rr.com/faq/WNS2003%20FAQ.htm#q11
It’s just the whole old fogeys not wanting to learn new skills thing, cause they can be lazy if they keep doing it the old way.
Oh and then you people complain about how MS doesn’t have the CLI tools you need! Why don’t you write them then? Isn’t that what you’d do on Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX etc?
Then you people complian that Windows is copying Linux/Unix yet isn’t that what Linux does? How many distros try to copy the Windows GUI. Gosh! That makes me want to swap over just so I can use something that looks exactly the same as Windows, is just as bloated, leaves me unable to run a lot of software I want to use, has a messed up process scheduler, a crap VM and a shitty TCP/IP stack. You have to make something better for me to want to swap people. The whole geek thing ain’t enough. The whole freedom thing is bullshit, Stabilty, pffft, stop buying shit hardware from dodgy companies based in Asia that no one has ever heard of and that won’t be a problem either. In the end stop blaming other people for the fact that you’re retarded!
RE: Matthew Baulch
“In Australia (which I assume you’re in based on your *.au domain), around 40% of businesses used unlicenced software. Whether it is cracked or not is immaterial.”
They almost don’t give a shit about us down here anyway so they deserve it. They give us shitty deals on their software and expect us to love it.
Shouldn’t it be deltree C:WINDOWS ? the command you used simply removed the files but not the directory.
btw, I am back with FreeBSD 4.8, and once again a very happy chappy 😉
Microsoft ins’t the only company screwing down under. Just do a comparison between the prices of hardware in the US vs the price of hardware in Australia. The best example of this would be graphic cards, and no, Australia doesn’t have tariffs on imported computer equipment, and no again, the distributors don’t make a huge killing, the people who are screwing those down under are the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, Nvidia and so on.
I wish people would stop using the word “Winblows”. It’s not funny anymore and they look like idiots
For those that think this is a new cool word, check out this article from 1992:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=437%40rehab2.UUCP
… a shitty TCP/IP stack. You have to make something better for me to want to swap people. The whole geek thing ain’t enough. The whole freedom thing is bullshit, Stabilty, pffft, stop buying shit hardware from dodgy companies based in _Asia_ that no one has ever heard of and that won’t be a problem either. In the end stop blaming other people for the fact that you’re retarded! …..
the attitude…
what else can we expect from a country who used to be a penal colony…..?
It is two pages ago, the discussion about the open files. However…
When an application crashes, it’s executable remains open. So if you have a program, it crashes, you need to reboot before you can delete it.
OMG you’re a fucking retard! Have a look in you PC most of the stuff inside will have “Made in China” or “Made in Taiwan” etc. The difference is that it could be made by some dodgy company which sells it cheap too (come to think of it there are some in America too), thus a fuckwit like you would buy it or get it in some vile OEM PC and wonder why your PC fucks up all the time. Otherwise it is quality and the only reason it will fuck up is cause it’s a lemon.
Do the world a favor and die you politicaly correct fuck stuff! A reference to a geographical location does not a racist make! At least I don’t hide like a pansy behind some IP number.
Damn it the woman I love is Asian.
//At least I don’t hide like a pansy behind some IP number.//
Er .. he probably doesn’t have a choice about that, if his firewall/router doesn’t broadcast a hostname.
Which it shouldn’t if it gives a crap about security.
(IP: —.nv.iinet.net.au)) … hmmm ….
I made my test program crash and afterwards I could delete its executable (along with my created test file that was open before the crash) without problem.
In what situations is the executable not deleteable?
You wouldn’t be using a server OS as a desktop OS would you? I’d bet that some people might like that feature, like people who run big servers, I don’t really know? But did you know you can turn it off? go here http://home.triad.rr.com/faq/WNS2003%20FAQ.htm#q11
It’s just the whole old fogeys not wanting to learn new skills thing, cause they can be lazy if they keep doing it the old way.
I know you can turn it off. That’s why I posted that Windows 2000 has a lower TCO because with 2003, you have to turn off all the lame, poorly implemented “security” features.
If you look at the functionality of this feature, can you see any need for it whatsoever (unless you are hell-bent on creating useless, uninformative log files)? It’s just one of the many circus hoops implemented in 2003 Server.
Oh and then you people complain about how MS doesn’t have the CLI tools you need! Why don’t you write them then? Isn’t that what you’d do on Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX etc?
Actually, I do write them when necessary. The last few I’ve written (all command line by the way) are:
1) A program to extract strings from a .NET executable, pseudo localize them, and create language assemblies for localization testing purposes.
2) A command line tool which will convert half-width Japanese katakana to full-width Japanese katakana. This tool works on full directories in a matter of seconds (manually, this taks could potentially take weeks).
and so on.
Damn it the woman I love is Asian.
Hmm, me too. I wonder if it’s the same one?