No IE7 for Windows 2000

IEBlog wrote:

It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000. One reason is where we are in the Windows 2000 lifecycle. Another is that some of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.

Source:IEBlog

This has been known for quite some time.

With W2K in "extended support" and Longhorn in limited beta, this makes XP the ONLY supported Microsoft desktop OS.

Good thing it comes in three flavors.

Maurits wrote:

With W2K in "extended support" and Longhorn in limited beta, this makes XP the ONLY supported Microsoft desktop OS.

Good thing it comes in three flavors.

More like five at last count...

NeoTOM wrote:

More like five at last count...

Windows XP:

Home Edition
Professional
Professional x64
Starter Edition
Tablet PC Edition
eMbedded Edition
Media Center

I count 7.

LarryOsterman wrote:

Embedded isn't a consumer SKU, it doesn't count.  I think that there's only 6 SKUs currently (I may be wrong).

And if you count "Professional x64" as just "Professional" (since they both have the same feature sets (spare the x64 support) then you're back on 5.

Windows 2000 is going on 6 years old. I don't think it's unreasonable. When Windows 2000 was released (1999), I don't think MS planned on back porting any of the technology to Windows 3.1 or DOS (6 years earlier). Granted there were many more releases between 1993 and 1999 than 1999 and 2005, but MS has to draw the line somewhere.

Windows 2000 is a very mature and stable OS and still very usable.  I work for a large company and we've got a couple thousand people still runing Windows 2000.

As far as web browsers go, you shouldn't be using IE anyway.  The latest versions of Firefox and Opera will run just fine on Win2000.

Surely there is some dissent within Microsoft about this...

Firefox about to get IE on it's knees.

W3bbo wrote:

LarryOsterman wrote: Embedded isn't a consumer SKU, it doesn't count.  I think that there's only 6 SKUs currently (I may be wrong).

And if you count "Professional x64" as just "Professional" (since they both have the same feature sets (spare the x64 support) then you're back on 5.

There are two you haven't counted in yet: Windows XP Professional N and Windows XP Home N. These are the SKUs required by EC in Europe. N=No WMP or something like that.

However I do see Pro and Pro x64 as two different SKUs

manickernel wrote:

Surely there is some dissent within Microsoft about this...

Firefox about to get IE on it's knees.

Using statistics from a site that is visited almost exclusively by web developers doesn't paint an accurate picture.

Considering Windows XP is built on Windows 2000, I think microsofts response is very unreasonable and it feeds the conspiracy theorists that Microsoft is forcing upgrades.   As for people who used the equivalant argument that should Microsoft backport to Windows 3.1 and DOS 6, its not the same thing.  Its a totally different platform, that I understand.  but as i stated XP is built on the same platform, to me the stuff the IE team says is nothing more than spewing crap.  Its Microsofts products they can do as they wish, doesnt mean anyone has to like it.  My feelings on this are disapointment.  But in the end this is a good thing for customers.  It shows that you shouldnt have confidence in a product that is that embedded in any Operating System and microsoft will even loose more share to Netscape and firefox, Windows 2000 users will more than likely switch to Firefox and Netscape 8 or even worse yet, loose marketshare all around.  But you know what, Microsoft brought it upon themselves.  I just find it laughable that they are refusing to correct a security nightmare that they caused in one of the most used corporate operating systems used today.

rjdohnert wrote:

Considering Windows XP is built on Windows 2000, I think microsofts response is very unreasonable

Yes, Windows XP is built upon Win2000, which in turn is built on Windows NT 4.0, which is based on NT 3.51, which has its roots in NT 3.1.

Do you think IE7 should be ported to those as well?
Do you really think that no changes have been made in the kernel and OS between W2k and XP?
Each version - each service pack too, especially major ones like XPSP2, have made changes to the APIs. Do you want Microsoft to start backporting all the new API changes to W2k? How long do you think that will take? This is like releasing an XPSP2 equivalent for W2k - an OS that's over 6 years old and has moved to Extended support.
You say that it's still a good OS and is used extensively? You're right, of course. Does that mean that Microsoft should still support it? Yes and no. Security and critical fixes should and will still be released - but to add new features, new APIs and support for newer software? That's what XP is there for.
Trust me, I'm familiar with the time and money needed to move large organizations to a new OS. Many places, some of which I've worked in, chose to skip XP when it came out since it offered few benefits over W2k. That, however, was 4 years. XPSP2 isn't the same beast as vanilla XP, and an OS that was "good enough" for 2001 isn't necessarily enough for 2005.

yggdrasil wrote:

Yes, Windows XP is built upon Win2000, which in turn is built on Windows NT 4.0, which is based on NT 3.51, which has its roots in NT 3.1.

Win2k=NT5.0
XP=NT5.1

...and yeah, the kernel is essentially the same. Even some Sofites will tell you the only real benefit of the original upgrade was media and wireless add-ons. Of course now they have added even more bennies with SP2, but "backporting" to 2k should be easy.

manickernel wrote:

 Of course now they have added even more bennies with SP2, but "backporting" to 2k should be easy.

Not really. Most of the SP2 changes were in IE and were reliant on an overall hardening of the environment it runs in, such as Local Machine Lockdown.

Windows 2000 makes much more use of Trident than XP, such as rendering customised Explorer windows and so on. Backporting all those changes, without breaking anything is going to be hard, much harder than implementing them in XP was.

I'd much rather IE 7 took full advantage of SP2 and its security wasn't compromised by having to run on older platforms.

Heywood_J wrote:

Windows 2000 is a very mature and stable OS and still very usable.  I work for a large company and we've got a couple thousand people still runing Windows 2000.

As far as web browsers go, you shouldn't be using IE anyway.  The latest versions of Firefox and Opera will run just fine on Win2000.

and here is the rub for the big corps.

on one hand you have the push to move to xp.

then you have IT folks who are not happy with xp issues and see xp as a risky move.

then toss in the vendors who have web apps or client apps that have issues with what they run on.

and it's catch 22 time

we can't use firefox due to web app x that only runs on IE
we can't run app j21 on xp cause it barly runs on 2000 and we don't have a new version of it.
and It likes 2000 and won't buge even if you threaten to hurt them.

so what do you do?

you keep running windows 2000 and IE till the day the world stops spinning...

figuerres wrote:

so what do you do?.

Switch to Linux

a) IT folks will be happy because Linux is officially teh whinnar
b) "Big Bosses" will be happier because FOSS has a lower TCO and higher ROI
c) Run the web-apps in IE under WINE
d) Run the client-apps under WINE in 9x compatibility mode

Problem solved