What’s a cynic to do with W2K?

What’s a cynic to do? I’m even starting to like (whisper) NT! Well, no, to be fair, Windows 2000 isn’t exactly NT. It might as well not be: it works, for a start. Thousands of bugs or not, it’s faster and more stable than NT and it’s finally caught up with hardware like USB and PCMCIA.

That feels like damning with faint praise, and maybe it shouldn’t have taken Microsoft this long to get it all sorted out. And we’re not saying you can run your 24x7 banking systems on it without a qualm (or a jolly big Storage Area Network and plenty of backup tapes). After all, one of the biggest problems with NT was the way the graphical interface made everyone think they could run a server without ever looking at the network or sitting down and thinking about what they needed to do first. So I can’t really call it an enthusiasm. But Windows 2000 doesn’t actually seem to do anything wrong. Apart from confuse home users who think it’s the update for Windows 98 and are going to either have to read the box, read the reviews, take it back to the shop unopened or wish they’d done any of the first three when they end up reformatting their hard drive to get it off again. SOHO, just say no, as it were.

If you use NT on a laptop, upgrade to Win 2000 now, do not pass go and glory in being able to use all the features of your laptop that you should have been able to use in the first place…. About the only question is for network administrators: Active Directory has the potential to really stitch your network up if you get it wrong, and insufficient tools to fix it or change the structure. Hopefully the reason Microsoft bought Visio is to get its mitts on the Active Directory mapping and management tool Visio was developing. Another good move from Redmond: if it wasn’t for being utterly bemused by their ludicrous behaviour in court, I’d think the Microsoft folk had finally figured out how to do it right…

Mary