Posted on 06/03/2005 12:46:49 PM PDT by TChris
However, the software giant drew some criticism after confirming that it will not make Internet Explorer 7 available to users of its Windows 2000 operating system. Although Windows 2000 will be supported until 2010, at the end of June of this year Microsoft will no longer accept requests for design changes or new features for the operating system.
(emphasis added)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
I want Ford to incorporate all of the new features in the 2006 Mustangs into my 2000 model....without forcing me to upgrade to the new one!!!!!
"I want Ford to incorporate all of the new features in the 2006 Mustangs into my 2000 model....without forcing me to upgrade to the new one!!!!!"
Excellent point. They bought the OS, it works, they just won't get the new features. Windows 2000 will have bug fixes, just not new features.
How often does your car manufacturer send you a new car or intall upgrades on your old one?
I'd like to buy the cars you buy so I can get my old car refurbed with new fetures, too.
Would you be content to get that in exchange for having your Ford crash at random?
crash at random? I've had no crashes on XP at office. My home PC with XP has twice ended up in blue-screen never-never land when left on overnight. Overall XP is pretty stable.
This should make life interesting here at my work. Everyone's on Win2000 and IE is the default browser for accessing our intranet. Looks like we'll be upgrading to WinXP Pro sooner than I thought.
Not a very good comparison.
In the computer industry, specifically the Wintel segment, it has been the standard for many years that applications, which, despite Microsoft's best deceptions to the contrary, Internet Explorer is, are developed with the intent of operating on the widest possible array of operating system -- Windows -- versions.
Microsoft is perfectly capable of making IE compatible with all Win32 O/S's (Win95 - Win2003), but deliberately does not. Office still runs on Win98 even!
There is no good vehicular metaphor for this situation, IMO. Users expect Windows software to run on more than one version of Windows. It's the norm. I can't think of anything comparable in the automotive world.
I suppose that Redmond has to keep up appearances, making believe that IE is so deeply embedded into the O/S that they simply can't make IE7 work in Win2000. Yeah, mmmkay.
OK, let's run with that analogy.
What if that same manufacturer was the one who made the tires; you can't buy the car with any other brand. In fact, those tires can't ever be completely removed. And suppose that it was well known that those tires were defective, making it easier for theives to steal your car, and that they had sent you numerous patches for them to get you by, and that other defective parts, including the tires, had always been patched and upgraded for free in the past. Owners of these vehicles are expecting the manufacturer to eventually fix the problems with these tires and send out new ones; they had done so before.
Lets suppose that your company owned thousands of these vehicles, and that they only had about 30-40,000 miles on each of them. They still have plenty of good use left. Now, the new tires are finally announced, they're finally going to be released! But, the manufacturer announces that they are only going to make the new tires for their newest model. One model.
You, and others like you, will just have to live with the defective, unsecure tires they gave you for free as an enhancement to the more defective and more unsecure tires the car came with originally.
...or, and this is the likely result, more and more Windows users are going to be switching to the much more secure Firefox-branded tires. :-)
DotNET is just marketing splash for a collection of common technologies. From what development I've done, and documentation I've seen, .NET = HTTP + XML + SOAP + WSDL + Common Language Runtime (C#, VB.NET, etc). Very similar things are also possible with Borland products and Java.
It's kinda like what Intel has done with "Centrino". You take technologies everybody else has too, package them together and give it a whiz-bang name. Presto! Consumers think you have something new and unique.
Excellent response.
I've never comprehended MS's fad fetish. The current thing is to make every user interface look and feel like a web page. Who in the *(&% thinks that's a good idea? Since when is HTML the be-all, end-all of user interfaces?
Similarly, the idea of making the whole O/S and all apps live and breath in .NET-land is ludicrous. It will be yet another opportunity for Linux to outperform Windows. The slow performance and unbelievable code bloat that would necessarily accompany such an architecture would simply be laughable.
This started a few years back when M/S was worried Netscape would 'take over' the desktop. M/S went a bit overboard (as is their wont) and proceeded to weld IE into the O/S. Ultimately not a good idea both from the UI side, as you mention, and the O/S code maintainability side.
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