Talk:Windows 2000

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Windows 2000 article.
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Former featured article Windows 2000 is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
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To-do list for Windows 2000: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Service Pack Slipstreaming - nothing on this so far
  • Terminal Services section is very brief
  • Networking support should be covered, at least in part (there's a whole checklist that Microsoft run through - will find this later)
  • Extended support and/or end-of-life status info should be added. Complete.Jdlowery 02:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] WPA

any chance of a note on lack of WPA, and solutions.. ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.107.93.248 (talk • contribs) 00:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On the assumptions here

This article seems to assume that Win2K was (is) significant in itself and in distinction to its Microsoft predecessors, period. And a very high percentage of the sourcing is to Microsoft.

Cumulatively, the article comes to be something like a summary of what Microsoft wrote about its own product.

I don't think that such an approach would go down well in other areas of Wikipedia. While I'll concede that most (all?) of what Microsoft says about its own products is true (if only because many people are ready to pounce otherwise) and that a very large percentage of Win2K's users and potential users would never have considered any non-Microsoft alternative and that it would therefore be a bit "pointy" to have long comparisons of Win2K with the Mac OS, OS/2, Linux distros etc of the time, this article does seem to be rather too "in-universe". Presumably people at Microsoft were keeping an eye on developments in Linux, (pre-Unix) Mac OS and so forth while planning and working on Win2K, and borrowing certain ingredients from those competitors. But as far as I can see Linux goes unmentioned other than for an overall price comparison, and Mac OS isn't mentioned at all. Is this right in a featured article on an OS that presumably has some significance in software (and not just marketing/Microsoft) history? Morenoodles (talk) 06:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I find this strange. Microsoft is the owner of the OS, also the creator. Why shouldn't a large amount of material be referencing Microsoft? Also, why should we be mentioning Linux other than the TCO stuff? And why mention Mac OS? I fail to see how any of that is relevant to the article.
I would like to see what references you feel we are missing. Could you please be more specific. - Tbsdy lives (talk) 16:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Tbsdy lives. Besides, the article contains several "negative aspects" on Windows 2000, things which Microsoft would never write about. - xpclient Talk 20:30, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't say that the article presents an excessively sunny picture of this OS. Neither do I want more criticism.

The last article that I spent a lot of time on was Wal-Mart. This has plenty of citations, but most aren't to Wal-Mart. Today's featured article is Weymouth; it has a lot of sourcing to Weymouth, but more elsewhere.

Is Microsoft the best source for Microsoft?

I bought a laptop that had Win2k on it. Win2k was new at the time and I could instead have chosen NT4 or Win98 on that or a similar computer, or Mac OS on a computer costing a similar amount. Or I could have been enterprising and looked for a computer with no OS, or one with this or that Linux distro installed. I gave at least a little thought to all of these options. I have no reason to think that I was very unusual here: I may have been in a minority, even a small minority, but not a negligible minority.

Major advantages of Win2k over Mac OS and Linux included (1) its familiarity to that huge percentage of computer users who were used to NT4, 98, or both, and (2) its ability to run the software they were already running under NT4 or 98. Win2k was a stage in the development of WinNT, yes. But it was also a stage in the development of OSes. Did it advance over NT4 or 98 in its adoption of or competition with anything in Mac OS or Linux? Does it seem as if its designers were looking over their shoulders at either? For that matter, would any Win2k novelty later have any influence on Mac OS or KDE or whatever?

Maybe Tbsdy lives is asking me about what, specifically, I have in mind. Nothing. I just don't know. I had no experience of Mac OS until Mac OS X, and none of Linux until 2003 or so. You're the OS people, I'm just a reader of the article who's surprised by its apparent unconcern with anything outside Microsoft. Morenoodles (talk) 07:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Excessing use of non-free images?

As of May 2008, the Windows XP article contains 14-15 images and the Windows Vista article contains 11. Comparitively, this article now only includes 9 images, after the recent "trimming". Is a raw figure specified in "WP:bla bla excessive use of non-free content"? How many images is "excessive use"? - xpclient Talk 18:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you mean Wikipedia:FAIR#Images, which does not mention number. However, most of the images in this article are screenshots, and Wikipedia:FAIR#Images does say that Screenshots from software products [are] For critical commentary. I can see very little critical commentary in the article. For example, Image:Windows 2000 Explorer.png, Windows Explorer had a built-in media player in Windows 2000; I see that the image illustrates what's said, but one could also say that there's no discussion of the visual representation of the media player, and therefore no reason for this screenshot. Morenoodles (talk) 06:13, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
PS I'm trying to summarize what I see written, that's all. (If you want my legally-uninformed opinion, it's that the very notion of copyright restrictions on screenshots such as these is ridiculous.) Morenoodles (talk) 08:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Limitation

We read:

Limited copies of an IA-64 version, called Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Limited Edition were made available via OEMs. [...] Limited copies of an IA-64 version, called Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Limited Edition were made available via OEMs.

I'd guess that "Limited Edition" means nothing, and instead was added to make the product sound grander and help justify a higher price. But yes, this is just a guess. If my guess is right, then plain "Copies"; if this actually was a limited edition, then "A limited number of copies", or better, "Five thousand copies" or whatever the number was. Does anyone here know? Morenoodles (talk) 05:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Family

We read:

  1. "Windows 2000 (Part of the Microsoft Windows family)"
  2. "The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features"
  3. "Windows 2000 is a continuation of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems"
  4. "Server family features / The Windows 2000 server family consists of Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server."
  5. "A DFS root can only exist on a Windows 2000 version that is part of the server family"
  6. "the server family of Windows 2000 also supports fault-tolerant volume types"
  7. "The Windows 2000 family of operating systems moved from mainstream support to the extended support phase on June 30, 2005"

The reader therefore infers that:

  • MS Windows is a family (1)
  • MS Windows NT is a family (3)
  • MS Windows 2000 is a family (7)
  • MS Windows 2000 [wildcard] Server is a family (2, 4, 5, 6)

Clearly this is metaphorical language and there's nothing necessarily wrong with metaphor. But is this use of "family" informative? (My own guess is that it's carried over from copywriting, where it's designed to vaguely reassure, suggesting but not stating directly that if you're used to product X and if product Y is in the same "family" as product X.) And if it is, are there really this number of relevant "families"? Morenoodles (talk) 06:00, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

One of the English dictionary definitions of "family" is class/collection of things sharing a common attribute; e.g."there are two families of detergents". I suggest you look it up in the dictionary. A family need not be a superset of another family encompassing everything in it. - xpclient Talk 12:31, 24 May 2008 (UTC) :)
Yes, I know what a dictionary would say. The question to me is rather of whether language such as this is more directly informative than its alternatives. I'd rephrase every one of these without recourse to "family". Perhaps you think that the term is helpful. Morenoodles (talk) 01:07, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is, or was?

My one computer that runs Windows runs Win2K. So I know that Win2K exists, present -- just as King Lear exists. So I'd tend to put the whole thing in the present tense.

However, I appreciate the logic of saying that Win2K is a dead operating system and that a description should be in the past tense.

So I don't know for sure and don't really care. But I'm sure the article should be consistent, and it isn't. Present or past? Morenoodles (talk) 06:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Power users

I'd thought that "power user" was merely a marketing term of the 1990s, intended to flatter people into thinking that they were regarded as something other than corporate drones on the one hand or game playing teens on the other. But this article takes it seriously:

Windows 2000 Professional was designed as the desktop operating system for businesses and power users.

I wonder what wasn't laptoppy about it. That aside, "power users" is linked to power user, which tells us that

A power user is a user of a personal computer who can use advanced features of programs which are outside the expertise of "normal" users, yet is not capable of advanced, non application-oriented tasks like programming or system administration.

Taken literally, this would seem to mean that intended non-business Win2K users weren't thought of as able to administer their own systems. So were they supposed to take them back to the store whenever they wanted to install new software? (It also makes the surprising, dubious and anyway irrelevant claim that they couldn't program.) I don't suppose that this is what was intended. So what was intended?

Or how about cutting the marketing term and saying something like

Windows 2000 Professional was designed as the desktop operating system for businesses and individuals dissatisfied with Windows 98. Morenoodles (talk) 07:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
In case you do not know, a client piece of software is sometimes referred to as desktop to distinguish it from server. e.g. desktop operating system, desktop virtualization. - xpclient Talk 12:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure. Wouldn't "workstation" be better? Morenoodles (talk) 08:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Such a statement would be even more inappropriate since satisfaction with 98 may not be the only reason, 98 lacked the enterprise features of Windows 2000. An enterprise user can be said to be dissatisfied with 98 since it is not aimed at users like him. Satisfaction is harder to define than power user. - xpclient Talk 13:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I bought a computer with Win2K because I wanted Windows, wanted various character sets (and therefore UTF-8), and wanted stability. I don't claim I was normal, but I've no reason to think I was very unusual. I was perfectly capable of administering my system, and indeed I've done some programming in my time, so I'm not a "power user" as the term is described in Wikipedia. So what does "power user" mean? (Or indeed "enterprise feature"?) Morenoodles (talk) 08:15, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
'Workstation' would not be incorrect. Btw Power user is not a marketing term, it exists in IT use, even in the Windows 2000/XP documentation. There is a Power users group in 2000/XP? See the Google definition. That said, I agree the line can be better worded - xpclient Talk 08:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
But as I've tried to say, MS's use of the term for the "Power users" group (somebody who has more than minimal control but doesn't have full control of Windows) seems to conflict with the notion that the company was selling the computer to "power users". My own memories of the advertising of the day are dim (and even if they were vivid they'd be discounted as "original research"), but I think that MS did rather little advertising of Win2K and instead got the computer companies to add to their adverts something bland and uninformative like Compaq [etc] recommends Windows 98 for personal use. / Compaq [etc] recommends Windows 2000 Professional for corporate use. I certainly don't remember MS or any hardware company saying If you're like most individuals, you'll be happy with Windows 98. But if you want any of [features X, Y, Z...] you should get Windows 2000 Professional instead. (I do remember hearing from friends such useful advice as If you're sick of the BSoD with 98, do yourself a favor and get 2000.) Morenoodles (talk) 09:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)