Gosh all those Microsoft products all work so damn well together don’t they?  And as a software developer I can say for a fact that Microsoft development tools are not only among the very best there are, but are amazingly well integrated with their business suite of applications, including Office and SQL Server and IIS.   It’s all just one big happy smooth seamless whole.

Of course those tools only work on Microsoft platforms, and you can only take full advantage of them if you confine your applications to Microsoft platforms, but if you agree to wear Redmond’s golden chains, it is almost embarrassingly simple and straightforward for a software developer to build some very impressive custom business applications.  You can be fantastically productive while wearing Redmond’s golden chains.

But the thing to remember about Redmond’s golden chains, isn’t that they’re golden…

Microsoft Turns Up The Heat On Windows 2000 Users

With the recent release of Microsoft’s newest potential cash cows, Windows Vista and Office 2007, the company is expecting a wave of upgrades from users seeking the latest functionality. But what if you’re not looking for new bells and whistles? What if you want to keep your old operating systems, such as Windows 2000, running as long as possible?

Microsoft isn’t making it easy for you. Office 2007 and the software for the company’s much-hyped Zune music player won’t install on Windows 2000. As other new products emerge from Microsoft in 2007 and beyond, more and more of them are likely to leave Windows 2000 out of the party.

Which of these installation restrictions are caused by a real lack of capabilities in Windows 2000, however? Are any of them merely a "squeeze play" by Microsoft to convince buyers that it’s necessary to immediately upgrade all PCs to Vista and all servers to Server 2003 or the forthcoming Longhorn Server?

One example of this conundrum is Microsoft’s Windows Defender program. This antispyware program can be downloaded for free, but it will only install on Windows XP, Server 2003, and higher. The application won’t install on Windows 2000, according to Microsoft’s own product documentation.

Users have reported, however, that this is simply an artificial rule built into the Installshield package that copies Defender files to disk.

Surprise, surprise.  The article goes on to discuss the upcoming legislative changes in how daylight savings time is calculated.  Operating systems will need to be patched accordingly, and Microsoft already has a patch out there for XP and Vista.  But not…surprise, surprise, Windows 2000.  And their position is, they aren’t going to either.  Computer not keeping time correctly?  Oh…you need our 300 dollar software upgrade, and a two-thousand dollar hardware upgrade, to run the software upgrade…

It’s good to be king.