Windows
2000 Professional is designed for business desktops and corporate
mobile users that require access to their data and personalized
settings regardless of physical location. Unlike Windows 98, which
caters to the home/consumer and gaming markets, Windows 2000
Professional--which replaces Windows NT Workstation--is designed
solely for businesses, which its feature-set bears out. Still,
so-called power users and software developers will probably flock to
Windows 2000 Professional as they did with Windows NT
Workstation. And they should: This is the best desktop
operating system that Microsoft has ever created.
To fully understand Windows 2000 Professional Beta 3, it's important to
evaluate the goals of this release. When Microsoft began preparing
for the next version of Windows NT shortly after the release of NT
4.0 in July 1996, it was decided that simplicity and reliability
should be the primary goals for Windows NT 5.0, which became known
as Windows 2000 in late 1998. Over time, the list was expanded
somewhat so that Windows 2000 would be the easiest version of
Windows yet, include the best business features of Windows 98 with
the power of Windows NT, while lowering the total cost of ownership
(TCO). This somewhat nebulous set of goals was fortified with
specific changes to the product that, literally, makes it the best
desktop Windows ever created.
Let's take a look at these goals individually and see how Microsoft
met the challenge or, in some cases, fell short. In the following
sections, I examine the features in Windows 2000 Beta 3 that
Microsoft is using to sell Professional as a solution for business
users.
Easiest Windows Yet?
A cursory examination of the Windows 2000 desktop (Figure
1) reveals no major surprises, resembling as it does its Windows
98 and NT 4.0 forbearers. Aside from a few obvious graphical changes
(new icons and color scheme, for example), there are a couple of
subtle changes here: The My Documents folder is now located more
conspicuously at the top of the screen and Network Neighborhood
has been renamed to My Network Places. But the Windows 2000
desktop is also less busy that previous Windows desktops, with fewer
icons and needless clutter. And the My Computer window is likewise
less cluttered: Icons for Dial-up Networking, Printers, Scheduled
Tasks, and Web Folders have been removed and placed in more logical
locations within Control Panel. This isn't a huge deal, but any
attempt at cleaning up the cluttered interface is a welcome change.
When you open the Start Menu, however, things begin to get
interesting. Windows 2000 uses a new feature called Personalized
Menus, which tracks the way you use the Start menu (and other menus,
such as the Favorites menu in Internet Explorer). Programs that you
use infrequently begin to drop off of the menu over time. You can
still get to them via a small chevron (Figure
2) at the bottom of each menu, but in day-to-day use, your menus
will appear more compact, with fewer meaningless choices obscuring
the icons you do actually do use. If you do need to get at the
hidden choices, however, it's easy: Simply click on a chevron (Figure
3) or hover over the menu for a few seconds and it will expand
to reveal all of the choices (Figure 3b). Months ago, when I first encountered
this feature, I wasn't sure that it was such a great idea, but today
I overwhelming endorse the concept. However, if you're not
interested in using Personalized Menus, they're easy to turn off
from the Taskbar Properties dialog box (Figure
4).
The Find feature from previous versions of Windows has been revamped
into an HTML-based Search Wizard, which opens an Explorer
Bar-enhanced Internet Explorer window (Figure
5). This new Search feature, not coincidentally, somewhat
resembles the search feature in Internet Explorer 5.0, but it allows
for sophisticated searching of your local drives and remote
resources for files with numerous options. There's one particularly
annoying limitation of Search that was also present in the old Find
feature: When the search results pane fills up, there's no way to
click on the folder name of one of the files it returns to open that
folder (Update: Thanks to reader Paul Hill, who discovered
that this feature does actually exist: You can
alternate-click a found item and choose "Open containing
folder."). Overall, however, the Search feature is a nice addition to
Windows 2000, despite the fact that it doesn't remember the settings
from your previous searches as Find did.
Microsoft's move to an HTML-based Help system has drawn collective
groans from various parties, especially developers that are forced
to wade through the massive Visual Studio 6.0 documentation in a
less than elegant way. But the HTML Help system in Windows 2000 (Figure
6) isn't as annoying somehow, perhaps because of the type of
information it displays. This feature is neither better nor worse
than the old Help system in Windows NT 4.0 in my opinion. Microsoft
also provides a link to an online version of the help system via the
Windows Update Web site.
Windows 2000 also introduces a set of new Open and Save/Save As
dialogs, which bear more than a passing resemblance to the similar
dialogs ignobly added to Microsoft Office 2000. These dialog boxes (Figure
7) now feature an Outlook Bar of frequently-accessed locations
such as the Desktop, the My Documents folder, and more, a huge
benefit to any user. And more subtle additions--such as the
scaled-back navigational toolbar--only add to the effect. All in
all, the new dialogs are a welcome change. However, I wish there was
some way to modify the icons in the Outlook Bar to include locations
of my own choosing: Perhaps there's a place on the network I
frequently visit, for example.
Error messages in Windows 2000 have been improved dramatically as
well. Gone are the obscure error codes of years past, replaced with
plain English descriptions and links to appropriate help topics. I'd
like to demonstrate one of these dialogs, but the truth is I haven't
had a single error (let alone a crash) in Windows 2000 Beta 3 (and
earlier) in over a month.
Microsoft has always done a good job of supporting multiple
languages, but the new multi-language functionality in Windows 2000
is simply amazing: you can switch between languages on the fly, changing one language to another on
the same computer without having to reboot. But more importantly,
you can use Windows 2000 in multiple simultaneous languages, where
some applications are in French, say, and others are in English. Or,
you could typically use Spanish for most tasks, but view, print, and
write documents in Russian.
For
more information about this excellent feature, please check out this
Microsoft White
paper.
Windows 2000's Add/Remove Hardware Wizard (Figure
8) is very similar to the Add New Hardware Wizard in
Windows 98, though it's far more powerful, allowing you to add a new
device, troubleshoot an existing device, uninstall a device, or
unplug a hot-swappable device. Take that, Windows 98. And kudos to
Microsoft: Along with a real Device Manager, this was one of the
most painful missing feature in Windows NT 4.0. And because Windows
2000 supports
Dynamic Plug and Play for automatic configuration of hardware and
support for new swappable devices (such as PC cards, mobile computer
batteries, USB devices, and the like) Windows 2000 is conspicuously
better than even Windows 98 when working with the latest hardware. I
have a USB ZIP drive, for example, attached to my daily use Windows
2000 Professional workstation. Because this is a hot-swappable
device, Windows 2000 added a new icon (Figure
9) to the system tray that allows me to easily unplug or eject
the hardware (Figure 10). Very nice.
The Network Connection Wizard is another example of steady
improvement in Windows 2000: Now, all types of network connections,
be they dial-up connections, VPN connections, Ethernet/NIC
connections, direct connections, or whatever, are handled through
the Network and Dial-up Connections applet in the Control
Panel. And the new Network Connection Wizard (Figure
11) makes it easy to setup and manage any kind of connection at
all. This kind of consolidation--where two related by previous
separate applets are combined into a more logical single
applet--occurs throughout Windows 2000. And it's a welcome and
successful move toward simplicity.
Finally, the infamous Web integration of Internet Explorer 5.0 bears
some mention. When Windows 98 was in beta, Microsoft tried to shovel
a one-click, mouse-over highlighting My Computer/Explorer interface
that closely resembled the way the Web works. The company argued (I
think somewhat successfully) that using this method for navigating
the file system would require users to learn only one paradigm.
However, customer complaints caused them to back off from this
approach: In Windows 98, as with Windows 2000 Beta 3, the system
ships with the old style double-click interface and leaves the
single-click style as an option (Figure
12). Also, the Active Desktop in Windows 2000 is downplayed
somewhat, so that it is off by default, though still easily
accessible. And the annoying Channel features from IE 4.0 (Channel
bar on the desktop, etc.) are nowhere to be found.
Hallelujah.
By now, I'd expect that most people are pretty comfortable with the
IE integration in Windows (Figure 13)
with the possible exception of system administrators that can't
stand anything superfluous on their systems. But IE is so thoroughly
integrated into Windows 2000 that the point is almost moot, and by
this point the IE code has finally matured to the point where its
inclusion in an NT product is longer an issue.
There are a couple of weirdisms in the IE interface in Windows 2000,
however. If you're familiar with Windows NT, you'll recall that its
multi-user nature caused Microsoft to divide the Start menu into two
logical areas, the "current user" section and the
"all users" section. You can see the contents of these
sections most clearly by right-clicking the Start button in NT 4.0
and choosing either "Open" (for the current user) or
"Open All Users" (for the all users section). Windows NT
4.0 divided the sections in the start menu with a line, so that they
were clearly demarked and many system administrators used this demarcation
to separate user applications (like Word and Excel) from
administration tools and server applications (such as SQL Server and
IIS). When IE 4.0 was introduced, the two sections remained (and
indeed, each section had its own unique icon) but the dividing line
disappeared, causing all kinds of complaints from sys admins. In
Windows 2000, Microsoft has blurred things a bit by combining the
contents of both sections into a unified Start menu they call combined
menus. So even though the two sections remain in the file
system, they appear as one in the Start menu (Figure
14). Sort of. When you move icons around the Start menu,
Windows 2000 will suddenly complain that "this change will
affect all users of this computer," a confusing little dialog
to say the least. My opinion on this is that the current situation
is somewhat acceptable but not even close to what we've been asking
for all these years since IE 4.0 debuted: Why can't it just go back
to the way it was in the first version of Windows NT 4.0?
Weird.
Another weird little issue related to IE integration is the toolbar
icons. Many users, for example, might like to display the toolbar
icons in My Computer as small icons but display the toolbar icons in
the IE 5.0 browser as large icons. Tough luck: When you change the
view style of either My Computer or IE 5.0 toolbar icons, the other
changes as well (Figure 15). I
realize this isn't a huge deal, but I think this little problem is a
good example of where IE integration just doesn't make sense: My
Computer and IE 5.0 are "different" conceptually to most
users and settings changes in one shouldn't affect the other. Weird.
Finally, the Personalized Menus feature from the Start menu has been
added to the Favorites menu in IE 5.0 (Figure
16). While I'm a big fan of the personalized Start menu, I think
that adding this feature to IE 5.0 was a huge mistake: Favorites, by
definition, are something you explicitly add to your system, so the
operating system should never hide any of them from you.
Unlike applications, which tend to spew icons for all kinds of
useless things all over your Start menu, Favorites are manually
added by the user and they should remain visible at all times.
Again, it's not a huge deal, and I'll probably find myself getting
used to this feature.
So, is Windows 2000 the easiest Windows yet? Yeah, I'd say so. Many
tasks have been streamlined and the user interface has been cleaned
up, though almost to the point of stupidity in some cases (Figure
17). One thing I'll never understand is why a business OS like
Windows 2000 uses cutesy names such as "My Computer" and
"My Network Places" when it would have been so easy for
the system to auto-name them to the computer name and network domain
name, for example. But overall, Windows 2000 really is the easiest
Windows ever, assuming your hardware is compatible of course.
There's nothing easy about a system that won't boot. In the end,
it's almost ironic that an NT-based operating system would so easily
outpace the consumer-oriented Windows 98 in this area, but then
these things rarely make sense. Expect the 9x line to jump into the
lead again next year when the new Consumer Windows is released.
The best of Windows 98 with none of the DOS
With Windows 98, Microsoft raised the bar of Windows 95 with an
improved user interface and a host of small yet compelling new
features that made the upgrade worthwhile. But the biggest reason to
use Windows 98 is compatibility: Compatibility with all of the
hardware and software on the planet. Windows 98 just works. And NT,
for many people, was a non-issue because of its incompatibilities
with both hardware and software. So a goal for Windows 2000 was to
add "the best of" Windows 98 (an important phrase to
remember, by the way) to NT. But "the best of" Windows 98
really only applies to business features.
Inevitably, the question will arise of whether Windows 2000 is
an appropriate upgrade from Windows 98. The short answer to this
question, alas, is no, although there will be exceptions. If
you're using Windows 98 on a corporate network, for example, Windows
2000 makes sense. If you're using a Pentium II 300 or better with
more than 64 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 may make sense assuming
all of your hardware and software is compatible. And, most
surprising of all, if you're a business user with a qualifying
laptop (A Pentium II with at least 64MB of RAM) then Windows 2000
actually blows Windows 98 out of the water.
How is this possible? Windows NT 4.0 almost completely abandoned the
mobile market because of its utter lack of support for power
management and mobile hardware support. Well, Windows 2000 screams
ahead with a vengeance, offering all of the excellent power
management support from Windows 98 while adding support for the
newer ACPI power management specification. Windows 2000 literally
offers state of the art mobile support that surpasses Windows 98.
But it doesn't stop there. Looking at the way mobile users interact
with data, Microsoft decided to make it easier for people to access
network shares while they are disconnected from the network. Two
features make this possible (and, frankly, easy to use):
Offline folders and the
Synchronization Manager. Here's how it works: Let's say you're a
typical Dilbertesque mobile worker that needs access to data in one
more network shares while the laptop is physically disconnected from
the network (because of a business trip, or a telecommuting
scenario). All you have to do is navigate to that resource,
alternate-click and choose Make Available Offline. This
launches the Offline Files Wizard, which steps you through the
process (Figure 18). You can choose
to synchronize the offline files automatically every time you log on
and off the computer, or manually synchronize the files with the
Synchronization Manager before the big trip (Figure
19). And the Wizard allows you to set up all kinds of options,
such as offline reminders and desktop shortcuts to the offline
resource (Figure 20). Sweet.
If you choose manual synchronization, you can launch the
Synchronization Manager from the Tools menu in My Computer or
Explorer (Figure 21). This dialog
allows you to perform all kinds of setup changes as well. Very nice.
But Windows 2000's support for the best features of Windows 98
doesn't end there. Windows 2000 includes a Device Manager,
Add/Remove Hardware Wizard, DirectX and OpenGL support, a new Backup
program, a disk defragmenter (Figure 22),
and a disk cleanup tool similar to the one in Plus! for Windows 98.
Full support for Windows 98's FAT32 file system means an end to the
agonizing file system incompatibilities between NT and 9x (well, 98
still can't read NTFS, but at least NT/2000 can now fully utilize
FAT32). And because Windows 2000 technically supports all of the
next-generation hardware--such as USB, IEEE 1394/FireWire, AGP, multiple
monitors/video cards, DVD, and Device Bay--it's ready to go on the
latest systems.
It's not all roses, of course. Windows 2000 doesn't support the
WebTV for Windows feature from Windows 98. And at this time,
hardware support for new Direct3D and Open GL video cards is spotty
at best. I have a 12 MB Voodoo 2 card that isn't natively supported
yet, so I'm forced to use the NT 4.0 drivers which don't give
Direct3D support so many new games are out of the question. This
situation will improve over time, however. There's no doubt that
Windows 2000 will become a superset of Windows 98 with time. Right
now, that's not the case. But it can only get better.
By using the
phrase "the best of Windows 98," Microsoft has effectively
shielded itself from incompatibility criticisms for the time being.
Users of Windows NT will be delighted with the new Windows 98
features in Windows 2000. Windows 98 users--well---some of them are
going to be disappointed. Especially if game playing and legacy
hardware/software support are an issue (So don't even think about
playing DOS games like Duke Nukem 3D in Windows 2000, for example. It ain't going
to happen). But Windows 2000 does include the "best of
Windows 98" from a business point of view, assuming we're
talking about mobile computer support, power management, user
interface niceties, system utilities, FAT32 file support, and other
business-related improvements.
The power of Windows NT... obviously
Stating that the "power of Windows NT" is a feature of
Windows 2000 may seem fairly obvious to someone computer literate,
but to the world at large, "Windows 2000" sounds like an
upgrade to Windows 98, not NT. But Windows 2000 inherits the core of
Windows NT 4.0 while adding a host of new features. Because it's
based on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 is extremely reliable,
virtually crash-proof, and scalable. But Windows 2000 starts with
the best of NT, if you will, and takes it to the next level.
First of all, Windows 2000 benefits from three years of
improvements to Windows NT 4.0 right out of the box. All of the
security updates, bug fixes, and other subtle improvements that have
come about in five service packs for Windows NT 4.0 are present in
Windows 2000. So Windows 2000 is going to be the obvious platform of choice for
developers, power users, engineers,
high-end graphics users and anyone else that needs a reliable,
secure, 24/7 operating system.
But Windows 2000 requires far fewer restarts than Windows NT 4.0:
Microsoft identified 75 tasks in NT 4 that required a reboot
(such as changing networking settings) vs. only 7 in Windows 2000.
Folks, that's amazing. To test this, I changed IP addresses on my
workstation, enabled and disabled Connection Sharing, and performed
other networking related changes. Not a single restart. To an NT
user, this is nothing short of miraculous.
Microsoft pushes the Windows Installer as a major new feature
of Windows 2000, but this wonderful program certainly isn't present
during Windows 2000's overly simple installation. Instead, we're
treated to a hand's off install with absolutely no chance to perform
a custom install without scripting it (I'll be explaining how to do
a custom install both before and after completing a normal Windows 2000 installation in a future Technology
Showcase. Update: My "Removing
Windows components after installation" Technology Showcase
is now available). This is clearly the most agonizing miscue in Windows
2000, and the one brain-dead mistake that the Windows 2000 team made
in designing this product. But Windows Installer is built-in to
Windows 2000, so future applications can take advantage of its
wonders. I'll also be looking at Windows Installer in a future Tech
Showcase.
Microsoft says that the performance of Windows 2000 Professional is better than
Windows 98 on systems with 64MB or more of RAM. Don't believe it.
Anyone that runs Windows 2000 on a 64 MB system (unless you run one
application at a time) will notice a difference. But once you bump
the RAM up to 128 MB (and use at least a Pentium II 300 processor),
Windows 2000 clearly outshines Windows 98. And, for you power-hungry
freaks out there, it also supports up to 4 GB of RAM and supports two
microprocessors, unlike Windows 98.
Windows 2000 positively oozes with security features, something
that's completely missing in Windows 98. And because Windows 2000 is
secure from the ground up, with an Encrypted Filesystem (EFS) for local security,
Kerebos for network security, Public key for Internet security, and
smart card support for physical machine access security, Windows
2000 is the ultimate OS for anyone that's worried about data
invasion. Windows NT has been battle-tested in the field with
numerous security updates, and Windows 2000 promises to be even
better.
One amazing new feature is the new System File Protection (SFP),
which protects all SYS, DLL, EXE, and OCX files that ship with
Windows 2000. This is a valiant (and successful) deterrent to
"DLL hell" where an application you install simply
overwrites key system files with its own--sometimes out of
date--version. Windows 2000 prevents applications from doing this,
while throwing up a reassuring dialog box explaining how it just
saved the day. Folks, this thing works and it works great.
Bravo.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership for mere mortals
The final goal for Windows 2000--lowering the total cost of
ownership--is something that's been attacked from a variety of
angles. The simple truth is that Windows networks are expensive to
maintain and support, so Microsoft has added new technologies to
Windows 2000 that makes it easier to deploy, install, manage, and
support Windows 2000-based networks.
Indeed, the "feature" I
complained about in the previous section--the lack of a custom install--is
touted by Microsoft as a TOC feature, because it simplifies the
install while allowing massive sites to script custom installs. I
kind of see the point but have to wonder why the Windows Installer
isn't used to install Windows 2000 and why there isn't a command
line switch to trigger a custom install. Whatever: The Windows 2000
installation is hands free and you can still use the System
Preparation Tool (updated for Windows 2000) to manager massive identical installs.
Sometimes I feel alone when I complain about things like this
(Incidentally, I'll be covering the Windows 2000 install process in
my review of "Upgrading
Windows 98 and NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 Beta 3," which should
be done soon).
Using the incredible IntelliMirror technology, administrators can
perform remote installation of Windows 2000 Professional
workstations, and manage Windows 2000 networks like never before.
These features require Windows 2000 Server as well, but you can
perform policy-based deployments across network from a single location,
allowing network roaming users to logon to any machine on the
network and see all of their customized settings (desktop,
color and sound schemes, Favorites, etc.) and easily replace desktop
computers without losing any data. I'll be looking at IntelliMirror
in a future Technology Showcase of course.
As far as upgrading goes, Microsoft says that migration from Windows NT
and Windows 9x is "simple" but I'd add a few caveats. The
Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 upgrade is virtually guaranteed, but
upgrading Windows 9x to Windows 2000 could result in a bizarre
Frankenstein's Monster OS, with dangling incompatible programs and
utilities still cluttering up the system. The installation program
will tell you which hardware and software will be out to lunch
before it installs, however, a nice touch.
On the manageability front, we see a mixed bag. Certainly, Microsoft
has done a lot to clean up the numerous Control Panel applets and
administration tools (indeed, the admin tools are hidden by default
in Windows 2000 Professional). But rather than truly fix the
problem, Windows 2000 simply reshuffles the numerous applications
you need to administer the OS effectively. I'll look at this more
closely in my Server Beta 3 review but suffice to
say that you'll be using "Manage this Computer" (Figure
23) more than you'd like.
On the good news front, however, is the way Microsoft will be
handling service packs for Windows 2000. Unlike the ugly service
pack install issues in Windows NT 4.0, administrators will be able
to slipstream the updated files from service packs into the i386
install directory on a server, allowing them to maintain one master image of
the OS that always has the latest bits. No more bizarre
reinstallation of applications after applying a service pack. And
service packs will be used solely to fix bugs, not add new features.
Future Option Packs will be used to add functionality.
Finally, Microsoft has added a new boot-up diagnostic utility that
is enabled by pressing F8 when the system starts. And like Windows
98, you can actually access a command line prompt at boot-up too,
rather than have to boot into the GUI. Windows NT administrators
have been asking for this feature for years.
Conclusions
Well, there's a lot of
territory to cover when you talk about a major new OS release such
as this and it's hard to do it the justice it deserves. But in the end, it's clear that Microsoft has done
an incredibly good job of determining what people wanted upgraded in
Windows NT 4.0 and then implemented those changes in a way that makes
sense. Windows 2000 Professional isn't an OS for everyone--Game
players with certain hardware configuration will find better
hardware and software compatibility in Windows 98, for example, and
legacy hardware is basically out of the running for an upgrade--but
Windows 2000 excels in areas that Windows 98 can't even touch, such
as security, reliability, and scalability.
In short, Windows 2000 Professional Beta 3 is the ultimate Windows desktop
operating system for business users, mobile users, engineers,
graphics artists, software developers, and power users. Its powerful
new features are balanced with a simplicity and elegance not found
in any previous version of Windows. I strongly recommend that anyone
with the proper hardware (at least a PII 300 and 64 MB of RAM, and
be sure to check the HCL for compatibility first) evaluate this
operating system immediately.
Calling Windows 2000 Professional a triumph is an understatement.
I'll be using Windows 2000 Professional Beta 3 as my day-to-day OS
for the rest of the year and I suspect that you'll want to as well.