Windows 2000 Just Say Maybe

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1999 by Sam Willis

Microsoft's strictly business operating system blends the features of Windows 98 with the stability and security of Windows NT. Is it worth the upgrade hassle?

It's surprisingly tough to give people the best of both worlds when most of them are happy living in just one. Nevertheless, Microsoft has been wrestling for years with the self-imposed challenge of combining its two PC operating systems--to make the desktop-oriented Windows 95/98 more like the corporate enterprise's Windows NT in terms of reliability and security, and to make the ponderous NT more like its nimble cousin in terms of device support and ease of use.

Now, at last, Microsoft has managed to build the best features of Windows 98 into the ultrarobust NT architecture, giving us Windows 2000. In purely technical terms, this is good news for business users of all stripes--from the two-person home office to the corporate skyscraper. But it shifts Microsoft's challenge to the marketplace, where the bulk of small-business users today are reasonably content running business applications on Windows 98 (many still on Windows 95, for that matter).

This is stubbornly at odds with Microsoft's plan to, having combined the operating systems, resplit them--or at least to divide the computing universe into work and play, positioning Windows 2000 as strictly for businesses and Windows 98 as just for consumer and entertainment applications. The company has moved Win 98 into its consumer division, and plans are already under way to morph the OS into a super-simple platform code-named Millennium--suited for game hardware and entertainment centers.

The blind spot in Microsoft's vision is that home-based businesses, telecommuters, and flex-time workers land squarely in the middle. Cheap PCs, high-speed Internet and e-mail access, and nascent home-networking technologies are making it easy to mix business with pleasure, to work from home a few days weekly or bring work home on nights and weekends. The line between business and consumer computing has never been fuzzier.

Fortunately for you, not even Microsoft has the strength to force the issue for the next few years; Windows 98 and Windows 2000 remain similar enough today so that there's really no wrong way to go. In the meantime, we'll lay out the benefits of Windows 2000 so you can decide whether to climb aboard or stick with what you've got.

In a nutshell, Windows 2000 is impressive, but probably not alluring enough to convince you to switch from Windows 98. (Windows NT 4.0 users, however, will want to upgrade with no hesitation.) If you're planning on buying a new computer soon, though, you shouldn't be surprised to find Windows 2000 preinstalled on midrange and high-end business systems, with Windows 98 relegated to low-end, consumer-oriented PCs. It's not unlikely that you could wind up running a mix of both.

The Windows 2000 family, though still officially in beta testing at press time, is expected to ship early next year. The line breaks out neatly by number of users: Windows 2000 Professional is geared toward offices with fewer than 10 seats. Windows 2000 Server targets small businesses with 10 to 25 computers. Advanced Server is for the 25- to 50-person office. Finally, Windows 2000 DataCenter Server is for large enterprises or high-traffic e-commerce sites.

The obvious home office candidate is Windows 2000 Professional. Designed for standalone or network client PCs, it packs most of the features of its brawnier siblings, but has limited Web server functionality. While Microsoft had not set final pricing at press time, Windows 2000 Professional will be priced closer to Windows NT Workstation than Windows 98--i.e., likely selling for $200 to $300--so if upgrade cost is at all an issue, stick with Win 98.

Many of the major changes in Windows 2000 are subtle, behind-the-scenes stuff, aimed at making the operating system more reliable, forgiving, and secure. Perhaps the biggest impact will come from Win 2000's built-in protection against applications' installation or setup routines' nasty habit of overwriting or replacing critical system files. However, a few up-front improvements--including new features as well as enhancements to existing Windows NT specs--deserve attention, and might be compelling enough to convince you to upgrade.

Modest System Requirements Unlike Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 will work pretty well with most PCs on the market today, and many of those sold as far back as, say, 1996. While Microsoft's official "Windows 2000 Ready" campaign strongly suggests at least a 300MHz Pentium-class desktop processor (233MHz for notebooks) with 64MB of memory, its proposed minimum system requirements dictate a 133MHz Pentium CPU with 32MB of RAM.

This means it's not out of the question to run Windows 2000 Professional on many of today's sub-$500 PCs. We installed the OS on an older Compaq Deskpro 166MHz desktop with 32MB of RAM; it takes noticeably longer to boot than Windows 98, but we find it's just as fast in everyday operations.