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Remember the Catch guy I brought up? He was a Windows Elitist,
Actually he was a Windows security consultant. I do not recall him saying that Windows was better than anything else, only that you could secure it as well if you knew what you were doing.
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I think the issue, is that Microsoft, WAY back in the day, told multiple people of importance, that basically "You shouldn't keep buying your Proprietary Unix kits, because WE are going to make a Server OS, and it's going to be easy to use just like Windows is, but, it's gonna have real user accounts and be secure and stable" and Nihil, You're one of the only people here who's pretty open with your years of experience, and your interest in Historical stuff as am I. I don't have the years of experience, but being a fast learner that's OK, but the History part of this, you may even remember.
Actually.... Come to think of it.... Nihil, do you remember when Microsoft did this? When NT wasn't out yet, and they told everyone that they were getting into the Server market?
Well speaking for myself and just about every IT professsional I have ever met, when a vendor runs off at the mouth you have three questions:
1. When can I see the demo?
2. Where is my evaluation copy?
3. Where is the list of current installations and contacts I can talk to.
I have never come across an instance of anybody replacing an existing Unix environment with Windows.
I can only comment from a UK perspective, but back then the market was very varied. There were lots of small mainframe, mid-range and even electro-mechanical "accounting machine" solutions. All were becoming aged, expensive and comparatively inefficient.
Unix was well established but IT skills were in short supply and great demand. The concept of an "easy" solution would have been very attractive to those wanting to move on from their current obsolete environments.
My view is that Microsoft bought the business from those who did not have a current solution and so, would not perceive any risk? After all, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so I don't think that Unix shops came into the equation.
Basically, Microsoft grabbed themselves a share of an emerging market rather than an existing one.
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I find that interesting. I wonder how they could set up something like that, and then release something like Windows ME. I only know of one or two people who ever used Windows ME without issues.
I know of plenty apart from myself. All it needed was plenty of RAM, regular defragmentation and turning off when you are not using it. It is a home user's desktop OS, and nothing more.
384~512MB RAM and any processor from 333MHz to 1.3GHz. The processor didn't seem to matter that much as far as stability goes but it certainly leaked memory and fragmented files. ;) Personally, I used Windows 2000 Professional except for games.
If you look at the timeline you can see that it was never "finished" as such. 98SE was 1999 and XP was 2001, and they were developing Win 2000 at the same time.
A cynical monetization of dead end R&D perhaps? :eek:
For the non-IT average home user then security software will still have a part to play, along with least enablement in the OS ("run as"/UAC).
There are also products like sandboxes and "deepfreeze" for the slightly more aware and irresponsible?
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I missed this bit:
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Anyway, Nihil, would you agree that Windows today, is STILL based on NT? I mean, Windows NT, it was rushed out to shelves long before it was really ready, and it had more memory leaks than someone with Alzheimer's. Add this to the fact that it still wasn't secure, and the fact that Windows 2000, XP, and everything else we use today, is still based on it, and you have an issue.
I would expect that it is, just like any other commercial or open source OS is based on its predecessors? I cannot think of an OS that I would consider "new" other than for sub-PC devices............... Android for example?
In the workplace the managers like to see continuity and familiarity.
My experience of NT only goes back to 4.0, as it wasn't popular or common over here before then. Also, the security requirements weren't anything like they are today, for example not many office workers had internet access as they didn't need it.
Microsoft's problem back then was Windows 95 which was rushed out (late) and had several issues.
The secret of OS development is to make your next release take account of the shortcomings in your previous release that couldn't be fixed through patches. That isn't an issue, there is only an issue if there are flaws that are not addressed. Given that NT has been around as a concept at least, for 20 years I would have thought that any problems fundamental to the design would have been eliminated by now.
I believe that Microsoft have learned a few lessons over the years. They got away with it with ME because it was short lived and only affected domestic users, but Vista taught them that institutional customers will not tolerate that sort of crap. I would note that I haven't heard anyone complain about Windows 7, and from what I have seen of the pre-beta, Windows 8 will be pretty much the same.
From my viewpoint what NT really meant was "without DOS" which was obviously a great limitation on early Windows.