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This article was published in PC Plus issue 153 (Jul 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only.

This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page. 

paul@paulspages.co.uk
www.paulspages.co.uk

Windows 2000 Under Development

This was my report after attending a Windows 2000 Reviewer's Workshop in Seattle earlier this year (1999). It focusses primarly on the Win 2000 Professional (client) edition, in line with PC Plus's target market.

The Windows 9x platform (currently Windows 98) has always been a stopgap for Microsoft, there to tide its customers over until they and the secure but resource-hungrier Windows NT were ready for each other. Last year's announcement that NT version 5.0, due this year, would be launched as "Windows 2000" indicated that NT was, at last, set to replace 9x. Although Win 98 has now been given a short-term reprieve (there'll be an upgrade release next year), there's no doubt that Win 2000 will be Microsoft's standard operating system within a few years, underpinned only by Windows CE in palmtop and embedded systems.

                Windows 2000 is still scheduled for release in 1999 (so expect it in late autumn), and has now reached Beta 3, a fairly feature-complete build. Replacing the current NT 4, it will come in two main varieties - Professional (the desktop/client version) and Server, the latter in Standard, Advanced and Data Center editions.

                Win 2000 Professional will replace NT 4 Workstation, and as well being Microsoft's preferred client platform for the corporate market, will also be sold to small business and power home users as an alternative to Win 98 for desktop and laptop machines. It will retain the Workstation product's ability to act as a very small scale server (minus all the 'real' Server's system management tools), although Microsoft says that its codebase is now 'really quite different' from the NT Server product line.

Win 2000 Pro's installation tools show its corporate-market focus, but also that some useability lessons have been learned from Win 9x. Installation is largely Wizard-driven, and the process can be scripted, so that system administrators can distribute installation CDs with some or all of the setup information and choices pre-set. The system can, of course, be installed from a network server, either in standard format or as a system disk image for fast (10 minute) installation-by copy, complete with applications, onto new machines.

The 'easiest' upgrade path to Win 2000 will, unsurprisingly, be from NT 4. Win 95/98 users will also be able to upgrade directly, although this won't be entirely seamless, due partly to registry and driver differences, but also to what Microsoft admits are 'a lot' of Win 9x applications that don't work properly on the 2000 platform. Direct upgrades will be supported from NT 3.5, but not Windows 3.1.

Win 2000 will be the first NT-based system to support Win 9x's FAT32 disk filing system, alongside its native NTFS. It also gains Plug and Play device handling and ACPI-based OnNow power management, enhanced from its Win 98 version to include a 'hibernation' mode in which the contents of RAM are cached to disk for quick restoration from a power-off state.

Device support (a traditional NT weakness) is also improved, with 2,000 printers, 700 network cards and 4,200 modems already on the list. However would-be power management users need to ensure that any BIOS dated before 1^st Jan 1999 is on Microsoft's 126-machine 'Good BIOS List' if they want full ACPI capabilities.

Like NT4's , Windows 2000's user interface will be based on Windows 9x's, in this case with a range of improvements that will make it a Win 98-plus environment. To combat 'menu overload syndrome', the Start button's Programs menu has been reorganised to show a short list of most often-used items first, with a larger secondary menu cascading off it; items are automatically promoted to the opening list depending on usage. You can rename and move items on the Start menus, as well as shift-click multiple items for group opening.

Application installation and file associations, two Win 98 weak spots, have been upgraded for Win 2000. There's an improved add/remove programs dialog showing dates and disk sizes, while dragging an application shortcut to the recycle bin automatically opens its uninstall dialog. Newly-installed applications can no longer 'steal' default association with file types from established programs, while opening a file in a non-associated application automatically adds that app to the file type's right-click 'open with' menu.

                The NetWork Neighbourhood folder has been ditched in favour of 'My Network Places', which includes automatic shortcuts to recently-visited shared network folders. Meanwhile Web page views of system folders have been improved, with 'see also' hyperlinks to related folders.

IE5 will be the standard browser of Windows 2000, and the system takes IE's user interface duties a step further than in Win 98. The browser's Web Search feature is enhanced to search for local files, superseding the old Start Menu File Find utility, and there's a background content indexing capabililty aided by Rich Property Sheets which let you enter keywords for files stored in NTFS partitions.

                The major browser-oriented upgrade for mobile users, however, is the extension of IE5's system of offline-viewable Web sites to include files and folders on Win2000 network servers. Choosing 'make available offline' from a folder/file's right-click menu creates a copy of it on your local PC's cache, which you can read and update while disconnected from the server, just as if you were accessing the 'real' locations. On reconnecting, choosing 'synchronise' updates the information. Win 2000 Servers will also support transparent file offlining, in which a file is copied to tape or optical backup, leaving a dummy entry in its original location which, on opening, causes the real file to be restored.

                Microsoft really has tried hard to make Win 2000 a good system for mobile professionals and multinational corporations. It provides true roaming profiles, which download desktop settings and even applications from a server to whichever PC a user happens to log on from. It has extensive support for Virtual Private Networks (encrypted connections made across the open Internet), and for 'lossy' networks, which used to mean unreliable wiring, but now mean cellular radio links.

The international versions of Win 2000 will all use the same binary code base, and each one (including the standard English version) will be able to view, edit and print documents in the full 60-plus language repertoire. A new MultiLanguage version, meanwhile, will allow entire desktops to be switched when a roaming user with a different language requirement logs on.

                It's become a tradition for Windows NT to slip behind Windows 9x in user interface and hardware compatibility terms, then either catch up or pull slightly ahead at the next release. Windows 2000 will repeat the process, but this time take a more decisive lead over Windows 98, as well as offering its traditional benefits of better crash-proofing and security. With the minimum practical client hardware specification likely to be 64MB RAM and a Pentium II, it'll be a viable option for many people - but watch out for unsupported DOS, Win16 and even Win 9x applications.

<Boxout>

A Walk on the Server Side

As well as being Microsoft's 'grown up' desktop OS, Windows NT/2000 is also a server operating system, competing with Novell's NetWare plus the many varieties of UNIX and Linux systems. Server versions support features such as symmetric multiprocessing (machines with multiple processor chips), and come with system management tools and bundled applications such as Microsoft's IIS web server.

                Win 2000's Server editions get a range of new and upgraded capabilities, the most important of which is the Active Directory. This is what remains of the fabled NT5 'Cairo' object-oriented filing system, first heard of in the mid-90s. It no longer stores application data files, but instead concentrates on handling information about people, user groups, resources (such as printers, network locations and even DLLs) and, in particular, the permissions these entities have to access each other.

Active Directory is hierarchic, object-based and extensible (so you can create new object types and add properties to existing types), and also replicable, so a 'super domain' can spread across multiple remote computers, with each one receiving copies of the others' directory updates. Data files can also be replicated in sync with ADS directories, using Win 2000's Distributed File System.

Microsoft's answer to Novell's NDS directory system, ADS will inter-operate with NDS, as well as with Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Exchange Platinum messaging system. The company sees it as an all-encompassing organisational tool, even allowing administrators to do things such as creating 'policies' which give high-priority users greater bandwidth on the company's Internet connections. Allowing policies to be set at individual user, rather than just group, level might be an improvement, but otherwise it's impressive stuff.

                Win 2000 Servers will also include, as standard, Terminal Services, the 'thin client' system derived from Citrix's WinFrame product. This allows applications to run on a Win 2000 server, but be controlled by users on different machines, which can be non-Windows systems or even web browsers. New in the Win 2000 version will be redirection to client-side printers, and a remote clipboard, so users can cut and paste between client and server-side applications.

                Microsoft's Internet Information Server web server will appear in 5.0 guise in Win 2000. Recognising weaknesses in the current version, Microsoft has made installation and setup easier, introduced load balancing across multiple servers (as part of the Advanced and Data Center servers balancing features), and come up with the idea of scriptless ASP pages - 'ordinary' HTML pages which don't contain any server-side scripting, so don't incur the overhead of server-side processing.

[ENDS]

(C) Paul Stephens 1999. All rights reserved.