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Microsoft Turns Up The Heat On Windows 2000 Users: Page 4 of 6

Chinnery says he's accepted the fact that he'll have to use the utility to fix his Windows 2000 systems. But, lacking an easily deployable patch, it means he must walk around to tweak each machine in his organization. This is a chore he doesn't feel he should face.

Other new software titles upset him as well. Chinnery wants the better reporting features that are expected to be found in Microsoft's forthcoming version 3.0 of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). But the Redmond software giant says its new patch-management software won't run on Windows 2000.
Chinnery says he might switch to Patchlink Update, a competing product that supports a much longer list of operating systems than WSUS.

Why doesn't Chinnery upgrade his machines? "If we go to Windows Server 2003 and then Longhorn Server comes out, it might be more money on top of more money," he says. "Being a small health-care organization, there's only so much money to go around."

Microsoft has a monopoly share of desktop operating system sales and can pretty much call the shots when it comes to support. By contrast, software publishers with smaller market shares tend to take a more benign view of customers that want to keep their older products running unchanged.

Sun Microsystems, for example, has an official policy that offers support, paid and otherwise, for its Solaris operating system for at least five years after a particular version stops being sold. Microsoft's five-year mainstream period begins the first day its products ship.

Sun's product-support lifecycles run for at least five years after an operating system ceased shipping, not when it started shipping.

Sensing that some of its corporate customers aren't too keen on change, Sun also maintains at least two major releases of Solaris on sale at all times. At present, Solaris is available in three versions: 8, 9, and 10.