[Paleo Conservative]

That said, there are advantages to a subscription licensing architecture but you're completely at the mercy of a marketeer who decides it's time to jack up the prices.

On the other hand the updates might not continue to run on your existing hardware. Lots of people still run Windows 2000 even though XP Pro has been out for over 4 years. XP is quite a bit slower and offers very little benefit over 2000. Subscription updates might just overload your existing system and force a hardware upgrade anyway.

[Billthedrill]

Heck, all OS upgrades force hardware upgrades eventually (even Sun), and if they don't the resident apps will. Can't get off that treadmill.

I won't make any categorical statements on workstations - de gustibus non est disputandum - but I can state with fair confidence that W2K3 server is an improvement over W2K server, even advanced server. For one thing you get to run W2K3 Active Directory as a consequence, which is definitely an improvement over its predecessor.

As for the workstation OS holy wars I remain dispassionate. I have to support them all anyway.

[antiRepublicrat]

XP is quite a bit slower and offers very little benefit over 2000.

It really depends. You can kill all the XP eye candy* and shut off new services to get some speed. And then there's the fact that 2000 can't take advantage of Intel's SMT ("Hyperthreading").

* And not through the desktop properties. Actually disable the Themes service.