Mua_Dib i'm aware that XP are based on NT kernel and have nothing to do with 9x/ME.what i said was that winXP home will be a replacement of win9x/ME, in terms of heavy OS and light OS.
What i wasn't aware of is XP professional version.This might mean what you all talking about but i will agree with everybody that i will not either roll to XP until it's tested properly, since i had enough trouble a year and a half now with win2k pro(drivers, installation, programs etc).
I hope that MS will think of us and will not stop win2k support.

Yeah. Drivers are fun huh? Thats why i dont jump on the band wagon to soon when a new OS comes out. I will wait and watch quietly for a little while b4 i snap-up XP Pro.
 
I will wait for SP3/SP4 first b4 going to XP.
 
 
But i dont think MS will stop support. I think perhaps that the support will be paralell between the 2K/XP Pro.
 
Either way i think the future looks bright for all the current NT based OS's.
 
-Mua

Quote:
Yeah. Drivers are fun huh? Thats why i dont jump on the band wagon to soon when a new OS comes out. I will wait and watch quietly for a little while b4 i snap-up XP Pro.

I will wait for SP3/SP4 first b4 going to XP.

Either way i think the future looks bright for all the current NT based OS's.

-Mua

Hi Mua, I agree with the above, but am not so sure about it 'looking bright for all current NT OS's' (I assume you also include XP in that). But I know where you're coming from.

The reason I say 'am not so sure' is because of this dreaded 'Product Activation' thingy. I've heard a lot of negativity towards this so far (mind you I've been reading a lot of negativity towards MS in general recently - about XP and office XP, so I could be just a tad overdosed !).

But in anycase, I don't like the sound of it.

Also, I HOPE MS don't BULLY us re: W2K and XP, by stopping to support us on W2K early so as we go to XP sooner. I don't know if this'll happen, we'll just have to wait and see.

Regards,

Jez

Yeah. I havent been paying to much attention to the prod activation thingy. Theres 2 ways of looking at the issue.
 
1. I'm sure you could imagine how much money MS has lost due to people copying OS's. Its the same ol same ol about software companies loosing income because of piracy. Of all the software that does get copied OS's surely must be the most pirated. So from this point of view i think its fair enough that they put copy protection in.
 
2. MS is so huge and makes so much money anyway, how is a few 100's of thousands of extra copies that are made and or cracked going to put them in the financial hurt locker. From this perspective i go and start to warm up my burning tower! (not really, but some would)
 
So i spare little thought to it mainly because one day when Win2K is long dead, XP is on its way out and been outdated by 3 newer MS OS's, Prod Activation becomes the norm, we will have very little choice anyway.
 
-Mua

These are my personal thoughts:
 
MS product activation is just a thingy MS is trying to pull to make more money! Its like they dont have inuff with the market they got. I mean they own like 95% of all computers in the world with their windows. I fully understand that and i have nothing directly against MS, i love Win2k coz it works very smooth on my machine and i am looking forward to XP, i do think that MS is doing a very fine work with their newest OS, but if there is something i really hate about them is their NEED for MONEY! they'll do anything to get more money! so, let's make product activation wich till lock you OS to 1 specific computer. Well thats a nice try MS but it has allready been cracked, and if you fix it, it will be cracked again! There is NO program or OS in the world that is pirate secure! There is NO computer on the internet that is hacker proof! Computers will never be safe as long there is ppl out there who really put their time and will on hacking/spying.
 
Personally am not a pirate, i buy my OS, i got only one machine. But i feel for those who have 5-6 machines and will go for XP.

I must admit, much as I really HATE some of MS's antics/business practices, that doesn't make it right to 'crack' their software.

i didn't say that that makes it right to crack the OS but it will be cracked anyway, so the time they spend on that stupid product activation that everyone hates anyway, they could spend the time to fix the OS better. I mean they must know that the product activation will be cracked again and again. I mean, if i ever buy myself a new machine i wont go and buy one more license, i will rather go over to LINUX or crack the license i allready bought. No offence to anyone here including M$.

Of course it will come out.
Microsoft will continue to support Windows 2000 for ages yet.
MS will consentrate on Win2k, Winxp, Win2002 as the platforms they support.
Hot fixes for NT4 will slow and eventually vanish and as for support on the terrible Win9x/DOS code - well the sooner that ends the better.
Windows 2000 was a major OS upgrade, although Microsoft aren't saying it this way, imagine WinXP to Win2k as Win98SE to Win98.
Win2k was a major release, a whole new OS from the ground up and a lot of companys and corporations moved over to it.
These corporations, no matter how big, can't afford to replace licenses after only 12 months, maybe less, of installed time.
Most companies work on at least a 24 month turn around.
As a Systems Administrator I will be getting some WinXP machines in, but only on workstations.
I've already tested all our applications under WinXP Beta2 and they work fine, so I'm happy to have WinXP Professional PC's on my network.
WinXP/2002 Servers, well I do have one sat on our domain at the moment and it's quite happily taking an active roll in our AD domain.
However, from a pure cost point of view I wont be moving our company over, even the lure of AD Version 2 wont be enough.
I think you'll find a lot of companies will be in the same boat.
Remember, WinNT 4 was a major upgrade too and that has been supported with Service Packs for 5 years, expect at least the same for Win2k.

Actually, on another note, SP2 has really bought Win2k near perfect.
Looking through the list of known bugs (and remember even a spelling mistake in a help file is given an issue number and is classed as a bug) there is only 1 that I know will never be fixed under Win2k which could be a potential pain.
That's the issue where if two sys admins are editing the same object in the active directory then only the changes made by the first person to save the object are replicated.
It could potentially be an issue, but it would mean that 2 or more people would have to be editing the same object at the same time - unlikely in itself.
I know this will be fixed in Active Directory Version 2 (The version that ships with WinXP Server) but just for that fix we wont be upgrading.

Thanks Bladerunner for your response.

Well, I had Half-Life say it needed Service Pack 3 to run after being installed on a Windows 2000 SP2 laptop..
 
Then I installed Half-Life's patch.. Must be some sort of SP3 in disguise; a Microsoft outsourced testing consipracy, perhaps?

Nah, Remember Half-Life was released in 98 just before 2000 came out. Half-life runs in NT4 so it only knew about NT4 at that time. The outdated code is looking for SP3 in NT4. Since NT5 is extremly close to NT4 code that's why ya get the error.