Editor's Note - October 1999

Windows 2000 Beta Feedback

Note: The below feedback has not been edited for spelling or grammar.

• I think the product is very good. I like the win98 feel and the NT secuity.

• A great product, overcomes a lot of NT 4 weaknesses!

• A large upgrade for Notebook Users A lager upgrade for enterprice networks

• A very good combination of windows 98 and NT features.

• An interesting evolution from NT. I especially like the global directory concept. Disk quotas are another feature that was a long time coming, and greatly welcome.

• An outstanding OS. Practically bullet proof. 2000 is still hardware sensitive though but if one abides by the HCL the result is a really robust platform ready for the next mellenium.

• Appears reliable and easy to manage. The technical support for Windows 2000 from all channels has been a tremendous help. Windows 2000 hardware and software support is excellent. The management console snap in utility is a real bonus.

• Been solid but with a couple of exceptions. Laptop performance has been better then previous NT versions. Driver support still needs completion. Probably will migrate once officially released.

• Best MS Beta That I have used to Date- Seems very stable - and ease of installation and setup excelent - will be working on PReload file setups next for ease of enduser setup.

• Beta 3 had a few problems, but very good.

• Beta 3 is not ready for prime time. Unfortunately the RC1 and RC2 releases are so delayed that W2K implementation planning is on hold

• Beta 3 was great ! RC 1 installed OK, but it blue screened 3 or 4 times RC 2 will not install on my Athlon based evaluation system (That's stinky!)

• Complete disappointment. I see a lot of frills, but no real advancement. Between the removal of active directory, the massive hardware requirements, and the advancements of Netware & Linux, I see no reason to upgrade existing users from NT 4 to Win2K. After testing Windows 2000 personally (as an MCP), I was left wanting. The increase in minimum hardware requirements from NT 4 is insane, and the "stupid fluff" that I encountered caused me to wipe out Win2K from my HDD and go back to NT 4 24 hours after I had installed it. You guys generally put out a superior product, but in my opinion, Microsoft really dropped the ball this time. I wanted increased functionality, instead I got a start menu that will slowly appear and disappear when clicked. Really guys....everyone I know could care less about the damn start menu thing and all of the other little artistic stuff I ran into.

• Definite improvement over NT4 in terms of stability and ease of use. Problems with DUN, IE5, DVD.

• Device driver support is weak. Professional slower than windows and NT. Both appear to be very reliable.

• Documentation is poor. Beta Newsgroup responses from microsoft tend to deal with easy questions only. The more difficult ones are ignored.

• Doesnt work with old programms,diveces like CD-RW. Documentation are not deep and technical

• Drop Active Directory and aquire Novell. (No joke!)

• Even the Beta release is reliable, this is a good thing. The use of te OS is very easy as are the management functionalities. I use it now daily on mij computer during working hours. I am very enthousiastic about it.

• Excellent product easy user concious product

• Excellent, a great improvement over NT 4.0

• Excellent. Everything "JUST WORKS". In Beta 3. At this point I'm scratching my head wondering why Microsoft hasn't release it... Again, I have had no problems with Beta 3.

• Excellent. Faster on a Pentium 133 Mhz than Windows95 was. No problems what so ever installing. Plug and play capabilities excellent.

• Excellent. Third party hardware drivers lacking.

• Exceptional leap in Windows Technology. Ease of use and Windows NT stability. TCP/IP performance is noticably faster.

• Execellent OS, most stable/compatible OS I've seen yet/

• Fantastic so far.

• For Release Candidate 2; I think the product is not ready for prime time and still needs some bugs worked out.

• For a standard user there arent much to see but in the administration has changed a bit. Much easier to work with Networking and so on.

• For me since I am also learning NT it is a lot but I will get it soon... Seems to be an improvement over NT 4.0.

• Full featured, user friendly, but unstable

• GUI to complex for System Administration and for begginers, all tools have changed to different place, too many services starting per default, needs too much HW resources, too big for 90% of the users. win98 is an overkill too...

• Good

• Good

• Good Stuff. Takes alot of RAM & HD

• Good and very stable

• Good impression, looks more stable.

• Good stability. Most applications work, some with minor problems, e.g. no support for "My Network Places". Hardware support is currently somewhat lacking (sound card and two different ISDN adapters are unsupported)

• Great DirectX 7 still has a lot of problems.

• Great about the GUI, so easy and fast. So far i haven't got a bug messagebox.

• Great, a lot of the annoyances of NT have been removed and a lot of good features have been added. The installation footprint of >600MB is an issue however..

• Great. The most stable Windows to date.

• Great. Used on Digital Highnote, which to work with Win 98 had to download drivers, worked right away with Win 2000

• Having some trouble with SQ Server 7. During loading there are some compatibility issues. I am a home user of Windows 2000 Professional

• How do I un-install it, I have a number of programs that ran under Windows 95 & 98 that will not run under 2000.

• I Have Found Windows 2000 both server & Professional to be a more stable Product. However Windows 2000 seems to run a lot slower than NT 4.0

• I LOVE IT! It's been a long time since an OS made me feel warm & fuzzy inside:-)

• I Love it! BUT, what happend to the quikres and task scheduler being in the system tray?

• I am converting the 95 workstations and laptops to nt 40 except for 400 standalone application machines that operations uses. They are outside my perview of authority so I leave them alone. I plan on an upgrade to 2000 across the board once my AIX upgrade is finished, we finish our most active quarter, then I will test it. But I won't test using stuff with time bombs. I installed an exchange server directly with 5.5 bypassing my 5.0 and still am looking at things that haunt me in the dark of the night. I'll upgrade my test domain with its 20 user license and SBS 40? 45? then upgrade my psychotropics before deploying. I am looking forward to integrating my exchange with the AIX mailer system so that the home office can get text messages in their outlook 2000 desktops. You guys have screwed us out of a Proxy 20. We won on at the Charlotte briefing and in never showed up. It will be years before we even think about replacing AIX with an NT and Thin net environment. It is the same issue which I overcame in the middle east when I was with NCR. To much invested in multi-user glass sceen code to toss it away. Need the technology paradigm shift which makes the code have no value so we can use your product as our environment. Luck with the new product. And, send me my Proxy

• I am impressed with its stability, speed and built-in hardware support. I regret that many hardware manufacturers are delaying their support for it.

• I am unable to load either software. I keep receiving incompatible hardware and software errors.

• I am very pleased with windows2000 so far, it is living up to all the standards that I expect from my operating system. Thank You.

• I am very pleased, i have problems with bt848 video and bt848/phillips tuner, also cm18330 sound on my sis main board, need drivers cm8330 from cmedia, was unable to work, it is hard to get all drivers and ine files off when you change hardwear, 2000 runs my games well and my internet it allows all boxes axcess at the same time we can all log onto icq or messanger at the same time, the speed is fanaminal to me considering how many boxes i have running, i also like being able to set up fat 32 or ntf's and axcess win 95 31 or 98, i think my only problemis drivers, i will study and try to write my own, willing to help in any way thanks for the cool stuff.

• I am very psoitive about the stability and capabilities. I am using Advanced Server running on a Dell Laptop and it supports the mobile environment and it allows testing / working with server applications.

• Active directory isn't there yet. Couldn't evaluate performance of our CTI applications because they aren't compatible. Several security holes, including the ridiculous capability to log into a 2000 pro workstation OR server from a Windows CE terminal client. I do like the mgmt interface though.

• Actually, can you believe that we are digressing to Windows NT, due to some of the lock down capabilities.

• I believe that this is an excellent culmination of Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98. Not only that but the many new additions and improvements to the OS that either Win 98 or NT, alone, cannot overcome.

• I certainly can say this, and with out any doubt. This is the best OS I?ve seen so far.. If you have worked with NT4 and Windows 95/98, now associate your knowledge of both OS and you ready to drive his baby. I would say that, It is user friendly, I?ve install it on my 2 workstations at home and it work like a charm on the NT Server, now it is time for the final test, I?ll install it on the Novell server. Hope it will be easy has it was. Perhaps If you?ve got some advice let me know . I have to be honest , Microsoft did impress me. Tank and congratulation to the Microsoft team

• I fear that too many new features have been added too quickly and will lead to many patches and security bugs.

• I find it to be excellent. Keep up the good work. It is a pleasure to work with. It's like Windows 98 on steroids with security.

• I gave both a try on a pentium II 300MHz, 64MB RAM, dual 9Gig HDs. All I can say is: It's a "picture nice HOG", unbearably slow!!! the "Safe Mode" isn't so safe either. It takes forever to install and it also takes forever to boot and to run. Is it ever going to get better? or will we need to run every workstation on "merced"?

• I have found 2k to be very interesting. At the start I thought it was difficult to manuever, but as time goes along I am finding nice tools. I am very excited and really look forward to the release of it.

• I have installed Win2000 Pro on my Compaq Armada 7400 and I'm surprised over how reliable the system is. I was expecting a crach every now and then but so far nothing. Haven't done any stress tests just "ordinary work" but anyway. I also think the administration tools has improved.

• I have not yet receaved Windows 2000 as of yet but would be realy intrested in testing it.

• I have only been able to obtain a partial analysis of the Win2K platform because I have not been able to obtain a set of drivers and software for my Diamond S90 sound card and my Colorado 5GB tape drive. I love what I have otherwise discovered within the Win2K environment. If I could obtain these drivers, then I would be able to do a full test. I am hoping that they will have been implemented in the new RC2

• I is more stable than I could expect on the basis of previous experience. Actually, the initial release version of NT 4.0 was much more beta than Win 2000 beta is. There might be some problems with the kernel since for examaple 7 heavy calculation processis can (running on lowest priority) can cause the shell to hang. This does not happed in NT 4.0. Furthermore, the amount of memory the win2000 consumes is quite too much. It runs smoothly on 256 MB while 128 MB is enough for professional use in NT 4.0. I would like to install it in on laptop but the memory consumption is too large for that.

• I like both products. The wizards are great, the program is very robust & intelligent

• I like how it handles hardware.

• I like it very much so far, except for minor problems regarding connecting CDR and scanners.

• I like it.

• I like it. I am an Networking/Implimenting guy (MCSE) and wanted to get a jump on it. I like the tools and the ease of use. It is very different from NT4.0 (user interface etc..)but if you dig you can find your tools and much more. I think its a step in the right direction. I like the tree/forest structure also. It will allow your Novell guru's to understand NT2000, which in my opinion will put an end to some of the NT bashing I am forced to put up with daily.

• I like it. From an administrative stand point, there are many changes that will require some training to take full advantage. From an end user stand point, the changes that were made will increase productivity long term (after the initial "shock" of change).

• I like the ease at which it finds the plug and play products. I have it installed on a 166 and it has noticed both docked and undocked configurations while booted and has had no problems with the network card and modem being unistalled and reinstalled

• I like the interface enhancements. 2000 seems to be much more user friendly than NT 4.0 and supplies alot of useful information in the help files.

• I like the interface. It did not detect my modem. I have a Phoebe Micro 56Kflex set to Com2 IRQ 3. It did not detect the com port. Once I manually installed the port, it found the modem. I have not gotten it to crash yet. I am not running any apps, just the OS.

• I like the look and feel of the OS, although I have reservations about the combination of features from Win 95, Win 98 that are not trully security centric into the Win 2000 OS. I still see problems lurking with Power Management, PNP functionality. I agree that Active Directory is a key feature of Windows 2000 that makes it more of a Enterprise system that what NT 4.0 was. I expect that the MOC courses for the Win2K MCSe track will cover the in depth nature of planning a Active Directory. Other issues that need more clarification are EFS ( Encrypted File system) also Directory Services Management and how to combine hetergenous domains ( WIn2k and WIN NT 4.0 together)so as not to lose the configuration from pervious domains.

• I like the over-all look and feel. Being accustomed to WinNT 4, I find some things strange (not surprisingly). Many of your wizards need to have a "I know all about x, and I want to modify the properties directly" button, similar to RAS phone book entries in 4.0. I find the network wizard extremely annoying. First off, what network administrator in his right mind would allow a regular user to modify his own settings? Secondly, why would someone that understands WINS or DNS server very well indeed, need so much hand holding? Please consider adding a "I know all about this" button.

• I like the potential that I see. I found DNS to be the most confusing aspect of the server setup.

• I like the server it is easy to administer. I wanted to see if games would play on it and some did not many. Not all of my other software would work with it, but, that is most likely because the software company did not write the CD ROM program to work with an OS that did not exist yet :)

• I love it. Way bettrer than Novell 5

• I love it. The only problem I have encounterd so far is the incompatibility with Iomega Zip drive, after I had tried to install it, I could not log in anymore...

• I love the product. It really does combine the best of Windows 9x and Windows NT. The stability of the NT platform with the diagnostics and hardware support of 95/98.

• I really enjoy the interface. I find it a bit easier to use than previous versions, however, it seems to be quite a resource hog and demand strict system requirements, which ultimately equal larger cost overhead.

• I still get the dreaded blue screen on and off, and have to switch the system off and then on again. Can't seem to find drivers for Symbios SCSI card attached to scanner.

• I think is head and shoulders above NT4. The only problem is that it will require an overhaul of our netwrking services such as DNS on the server side. The professional version is the best thing out there for general users thus far in ease of use. I like the many new features that improve managability from an MIS department view.

• I think it is the best release of Windows there ever was. If the full version is even more better, it will be the Operating system of the century.

• I think it looks and feels great. The appearance is similar to Windows 98 and NT 4.0.

• I think it will be the best Windows ever! I have been running RC1 for about 3 months now and, despite some minor bugs, it is more stable and works faster than either Win98SE or WinNT4. Despite the negative publicity Microsoft sometimes receives, I enjoy using Microsoft products and I will continue to use them. Thanks! seckland@msn.com

• I think that it is the best beta release that Microsoft has produced to date!

• I think user interface is very childish, treats the user as if they were 3 years old, eg 'Computers near me' and 'my network places'. I do not like that at all. Also, I find it harder to configure than NT and 98. OS is stable, but some drivers seem difficult to find

• I thought that this was one of the easiest installations ever. I have been running Windows 2000 pro and Server since I received the RC1 CD and have not looked back since. All the systems have been very stable.

• I was disappointed with the quality of RC1, Beta 3 was far more stable. I would like to see some of the "smaller" things fixed like power management. I think there is still a long way to go before this hits the streets.

• I would like to set up this new application, as a pilot for upgrade implementation

• I've noticed that there is no longer the NT services available, that they went to the 95/98 type. I had difficulty doing a clean install on an NTFS partition and I finally had to format the partition as fat. It went seamlessly thereafter, but that was on a clean machine with no applications to install. I tried to install IIS and the SMTP but could not find how to access them, they were not listed in the programs menu. When installing it on a network with a dual boot NT machine the Computer Account was changed and I could not access the domain from the NT side. Overall, however, I like the look and feel of it as a desktop OS.

• If had it since the early Beta 1's; since RC1 no serious problems encountered. Found that most problems others encountered had to do with lack of knowledge, not the actual product.

• If you install them from a clean hard disk...seems to work ok...issues with a boot disk. However DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES upgrade an existing OS. Your program checker may say all is well, but it has trashed the hard disk and OS every time.

• Improvement over NT 4

• Install is very very very slow on older machines (P166 and up w/ 64+ meg memory) I like the fact that you don't have to reboot when adding components or some hardware. It seems fairly stable, especially for a beta release. But then again, I haven't put it under much stress yet. Waiting for RC2 to do that.

• Install of Beta 2 was a bit difficult to new HDD. Inability to upgrade to new Betas was also an annoyance. Otherwise Hardware Mngt, PNP, Disk Admin, etc are great features.

• Installation process should include at least a few installation options, such as in a Linux install. MS could at least include: User, Power User and Administrator (for instance, system folders and extensions are *not* hidden by default. It could also include a more secure set up for firewalls, a set up for web servers and/or mail servers, DNS servers, each time installing only what is necesary for the system to work securely, reliably and with less overhead. I'm quite interested to see more of the recovery features and hope it has taken those built into 9x even farther.

• Installation takes way too long and too much space. Older PC's, which some find still useful, choke on the installation overload, laptops in particular.

• Is a great applications tool to have around.

• It appears that Microsoft has done their homework on this one. Have installed it on a Compaq Deskpro EN (PII-450 w/128MB RAM), Toshiba Tecra Notebook (PII-300 w/192MB RAM)and an AST Desktop with FIC motherboard and AMD K6-2-400 w/128MB RAM with no install problems. Plug and Play implementation very good. Ditto with multimedia support and mobile computing. 95% of user applications function OK. Easy setup for Internet and NT-based Ethernet LAN.

• It appears to me that Microsoft is again embarking on a project with little concern for the organisations such as ours that are using multiple environments. When companies like Novell is pulling out all of the stops to make everything part of the same network, why is Microsoft still such a proprietory environment. The complications and implications of moving my Exchange 5.5 environment to 2000 are simply not worth the risk, and in my mind the dividend. I still feel that in spite of the promises, I would be working with a half complete, rushed NOS. Why should I risk the migration or the upgrade? I do not want to be a guinea pig for Microsoft and their rush to get the product to market. My test bench is what I draw my conclusions from, and so far, I am not convinced.

• It could be a good product if the optimisation is well done. It seems to be VERY heavy to manage. Have to improve compatibility with NT4 for the security and network things

• It crashes alot (RC2) I don't intend to do any more testing until a copy that works. So far every copy of mine either crashed, or was just so buggy that I couldn't get the full effect of the OS.

• It has worked well, but I have a technical problem and I can't find a way to pass my question to Microsoft.

• It is Reliable and Stable.

• It is a definite improvement from Windows NT 4.0. The move from a flat file domain system to a true integrated directory based domain is an excellent feature. It allows me to centralize management, ease administration of my network resources, and allows me to delegate administrative tasks. I am in the midst of designing an enterprise infrastructure for my firm to allow for scalability and growth.. soon to encompass several sites.

• It is a robust operating system with a lot of overhead.

• It is a solid OS but the performacce is still slow, I can not push to the limit of my hardware capcacity. I would like to see The OS is ready for a great preformance in the Enterprize Enviroment.

• It is a vast improvement over NT 4.0. Only the hardware and application incompatabilities need to be resolved.

• It is a very intensified OS for use in small businesses and computer literate home users. Allows for any number of instructional opportunities.

• It is amazing. Well thought out, as user friendly as it gets. Adapatable. Just when we thought you had done it all you came up with this!

• It is definitly LESS compatible with older programs than NT4. It hangs in the blue screen of death with no possible recourse except to power down. (Bad News) It needs a much greater hardware compatibility than it now has.

• It is not all I had hoped for. Still to many places where a reboot is required. Product is too different from NT 4 to make an easy transistion. I don't like the requirement for DNS on install it is very confusing and will create installation problems for people who don't fully understand DNS.

• It is totally cool! It was able to find and install drivers for a Sound Blaster-16 Wave Effects card ... in an old Gateway P5-133 with a broken PCI/IDE Bridge chip! It also looks good and performs well on a P5-133. This is amazing, considering how much bigger it is than NT 3.51.

• It is very nice, feature packed OS. Surprisingly fast for the amount of functions it has. Apart from a few bugs (that I think will be corrected at release time) it behaves well and it is very easy to use. A welcome addition is the Defrag feature and ONE console for managing the workstation. It is a very promissing product as it includes averything in my wishlist as sysadmin.

• It kicks Ass! I can't wait to deploy. My boss is a troglodyte! Our School District has BDC's from the user domain at every site to run over our slow (frac. T-1, 56K) links. NT2K's new directory is not better than sex, but just try telling our testers that!

• It looks great to me. I like the aware drop down menus. Some of the administration tools we use on a daily basis are buried a little deeper than before. It seams that you can minimize a window even when the process contents are chugging away. I enjoy the interface icon placement and overall look. Good job! now roll it out so we can start testing and using it in production.

• It looks okay, but there are still minor issue, in regard to audio-drivers etc. Based on Beta3

• It rocks!!

• It seems to be quite stable, although Active Directory seems to have a number of serious shortcomings for Enterprise deployment, especially compared with Functionality that I have grown to sepend upon that exists in Novell's NDS product.

• It seems to be very stable, Some legacy devices are hard to install, but all else its working well.

• It still has some specific bugs, printing/ has difficulty logging onto NT network shares, but like it

• It was very slow... after rebooting it doesn't run anymore. It stops booting at AGP440.SYS. Reading Usenet newsgroups, many people are having this problem but I have yet to find a solution. So far, we are not impressed.

• It works great, looks great, it's the cat's ass and the cat too.

• It works okay.

• It's a fine platform - but it need more memory, CPU and disk space. IF it does't need it - i was rules ;o) BTW: That the reason of file driver.cab in Driver Cache ? Why not burn it on CD ?

• It's a great OS, but I'm happy that Release Candidate 1, the version I have is not the final release, yet. This is why I'm writing to you. Lots of Bugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• It's great, easy to install, easy to use, not cpu intensive

• It's pretty exciting. I'm thrilled about Active Directory. It will be fabulous to be able to search for a printer orperson based on any criteria. I also love the remote administration feature

• It's the best OS Y'all have deployed so far, however we have run into some significant holes.

• It's ugly like Win98. And it's a piece of shit, like all Windows. The video chip, an Intel 810, is not supported on the Dell 400 mhz celery we are using. So, yeah, it sucks.

• Looks great so far!

• Love the PNP in both Pro and Server, but would like to see it expand even more (i.e. SBLive Sound cards, and other popular hardware). Also, it's a real pain to setup Server as a stand-alone server. Not all servers built should require Active Dir; it should be a more obvious options, as not all sites require DNS, DHCP, or Active Dir. I have setup several sites which utilize an ADSL connection, and the Service Provider offers packages that include static IPs, and provide DNS.

• Mostly good. Main frustration is that active directory uses a propritory schema instead of one of the industry standard schemas, leading to problems of interoperability. Second frustration is that there will be no directory aware gina built for NT 4. (Does not need to be fully functional to be very useful)

• Needs more support for MAC's and stronger support of Novell Servers in Mixed Network environments

• Nice but not ready for the consumer market. Device setup and detection still needs improvement

• Nice have so problems getting cd burner to operate

• Nice to develop in (not having to reboot on severe abends). Will take awhile to get familiar with and used to the differences in security/policy/admin services from Win9x

• Not as stable as I would have liked

• Not bad, but still crashing a couple of times a day

• Now that I'm accustom to finding all of the tools, I am very pleased with the performance and ease of use for most of the functions. Apart from some minor networking issues we have encountered (possibly driver related), we have been delighted with our testing and look forward to the final release.

• OK in most respects - a good blend of Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. Active directory setup is more complex than it needs to be, primarily because of the name server setup. The OS is also very flaky about detecting legacy hardware - we've had problems getting it to detect serial and paralelle ports on Intel Pentium motherboards - that shoiuld be a piece of cake.

• Obviously still has bugs, but seems stable, and is working reasonably well. I find it unfortunate that we have no method to report our bug finds to Microsoft, things like Exchange Admin not working, and TechNet client is hosed up.

• Okay...except I don't like having to go to two separate places to configure the NIC and network protocol.

• On my relatively high end systems, Windows 2000 did not perform adequately. The systems were sluggish and unstable. If this is how Windows 2000 will be finally, we will not be using it.

• Other than (voodoo2) d3d drivers not working, it has performed flawlessly for over a month. By far the best Windows yet, without question. I could not go back to win95 or 98 now.

• Other that it is Bloatware not to bad. Good programmers would have been able to do the same thing with less code and make it fast too. WOL should work from any shutdown.

• Outstanding -- we plan to go with the product as soon as it is released. Our users have pretty much adopted it as the preferred operating system.

• Outstanding product, merges the best of 98 with the stability of NT 4.0. All tests against our test machines in both the server and professional category have gone smoothly and without incident. Anxiously awaiting final release of product

• Outstanding. A little hard to get used to. i.e. new ways to do familiar tasks.

• Product appears to be pretty good. I use Win2NCS on my Novell Netware Network to share the server's modems. I have been unable to get it to work with W2K. It works fine with NT4. It's probably a Novell problem but I have been unable to get any help from Novell.

• Professional has been very good. I'm disappointed that much of my NT 4 hardware did not come with drivers, but I was able to find one for everything but VIA's USB chipset. Since I started doing Beta's with OS/2, this undoubtedly is the most stable beta I have seen from MS.

• Professional is great. It is everything I have said you should include in NT and more. However, is all that extra just really necessary in the server? Maybe you could have an option during install of a server for "Old Style" Desktop setting. In other words: No Active Desktop. Active Desktop is a GREAT feature for workstations, especially ones with power. However, not so much on servers. I know you can turn it off but I just want a straight-up vanilla server.

• Professional: People are unable to comprehend how usefull it is to combine Plug and Play (namely USB) with the stability of NT and better ease of installation & use. Server: Downside is larger memory requirments and having to relearn occasionaly complicated server tools, (user manager for domains is now part of the active directory collection, etc.)

• Quite stable & faster than NT 4.0/SP5.

• RC1 .. Professional works great. Server, AD interface needs work.

• RC2 has a good number of fixes that have improved the roll-out of W2K (getting rid of the start up method, etc). Hardware support is getting better.

• RC2 still has many problems. Mostly compatibility problems with NT 4.0 software and lockups during shutdown on Compaq EP Deskpro series desktops.

• RC2: resource hog should be more stable

• Really impressed with Windows 2000 professional - I like how it includes the stability and performance of NT, yet still maintains plug and play functionality and device manager. Like the features of windows 2000 server, but did not like that I will need to relearn how to do many tasks that I have become accustomed to with NT4.

• Really like how I can design the MMC to combine common network management tasks. The theory behind the overall design of the product is an improvement over previous MS network OS'

• Scanner and HP CD-ROM R/W (external)will not operate. I had to install a second version of W2000 Prof. the original installation became corrupt and I could not fix the problem. Of course now I will have to reinstall all of the software.

• Seems to run very well so far. The only problem has been APM on some machines.

• Simple to deploy, and manage

• Slow. Cute looking (for desktops) but servers doesn't need that stuff.

• So Far So Good, Lots of new features, which makes it a little more complicated than NT, I beleive that the conversion for companies will be slow do to the complexity.

• So far I am impressed with it's stability, and features. It also appears faster on my 200Mhz MMX system w. 64MB than either Win 98 or NT 4.0 I look forward to seeing it scream on my 500 Mhz PIII. I also have appreciated the features for Defrag and system maint.

• So far I like RC1 "BUT" my biggest and most anoying point in the OS is that it retains drivers and .dll's after the hardware has been removed. It is very unerving to have resource confilicts with hardware that is not installed!!!! If you are going to target Windows 2000 Pro and Server to the IT community you might want to look at the lack of control you are giving IT managers, the main reason that I love Linux is the fact that I am in control and can taylor to my users needs.

• So far in the work environment I like it but it still has a lot of problems. I run a Diamond Viper V550 PCI and while showing and hiding my desktop the 2000 Pro video just crashed the whole machine. Hmmm this is odd. While playing games such as Everquest which will sort of run under 2000 my sound frequently locks up the game and forces me to control+alt+delete it. While the product looks impressive it is very slow even on Dual Pentium Pro's. Much, much slower than NT 4.0 Workstation. I can only hope that some of these issues will be resolved before the product actually ships but my fear is growing since we are already up to Release Canditate 2.

• So far it has been a good platform. However, it requires a lot of system overhead. I am running a dual P-III processor w/ 256 RAM on a Tyan motherboard using 100 Mhz bus and the system is still slow.

• So far so good.

• Stability and uptime are key requirements. If i need to reboot to change settings on the server it is a problem. Eye candy needs to be kept at a minimum on a server. Error messages need to provide clear information as to what caused the problem and reference soloutions that are avaliable and not 'Purchase the Windows Resource Kit and look at page 53 for what caused your AccessViolation 000x88x'

• Stable and works with variety of HW platforms

• Stable, but some apps crashed the start menu... I installed Visual J++ 1.1, and during installation I rebooted the machine (crazy-test) and the start menu options was completely duplicated.

• Still a few bugs to be ironed out, and not enough documentation (printed). Has some very nice features as well, though. If the bugs are fixed, it'll make a very strong product.

• Still unstable

• Surprisingly smooth OS for a Beta.

• TCP/IP problems. MAPI with Netscape works fine but Outlook client has problems. Eudora Pro also does not work consistently. Meeting Maker client does not work at all. The beginnings of Kerberos support have me slightly hopeful. We are a DCE environment that is watching you reinvent DCE. That is not a complaint, just keep them compatable. There needs to be a better integration with non windows DNS servers. I'm sure we are not going to replace our DNS environment any time soon.

• Testing has been good. Some trouble with some low end network cards like linksys. Minor trouble with some programs using 100% of the processor. Otherwise great.

• The "new" interface slows down the more experienced NT 4.0 users. I find myself shelling to the command line frequently. I'm impressed with the relative stability of the OS, especially the decrease in necessary reboots. However, I'm disappointed in the technical/reference documentation--there hasn't been any improvement over NT 4.0. Admins and technicians still have to dig through knowledge base articles, technet CDs, 3rd party info, etc.

• The Windows 2000 Professional seems to be working quite well. The Plug and Play works great. I installed it on a notebook, and I didn't need to put in any single driver.

• The ability to get access to online help is poor. None of the IIS 5 help files are accessible because of an error in the URLs which mean I have to manually open each one and no longer have the ability to link from one to the other. I am not sure why those help files were made as htm files rather than traditional help.

• The beautifull thing is that you don’t have to install all those drivers for printers and usb-apparatus. More secure and reliable than win9x. Less memory leaks as in windows 9x.

• The only issues are ones Microsoft is most likely aware of. The main issue is not being able to work with and existing NT domain. A computer cannot be added to an existing domain in Windows2000. The other issue I have seen is trying to get a CD burner working in the OS. Upon loading software (i.e. HP's easy CD-creator) Windows2000 will blue screen on boot. By booting into safe mode, getting the Add/Remove Software panel up using DOS commands, and actually removing the software the blue screen will go away.

• The product is to slow on machines.. It's not fast.. The look is good.. Hardware support is good..

• The professional is a very good product. But the server is very heavy to administering. I have seen the NDS from the novell, this is very good thing. The ADS is very difficult to administer, You have to go many places to set anything. In the NDS you can do it easly.

• The stability is nothing short of awesome. The administrative terminal server makes remote management far simpler than the old web-based utilities. I have heard, however, that the terminal client is not shipping with Professional. This is a big mistake, in my opinion, because a) it takes virtually no space and b) it's much easier for an administrator to have the client already installed on the computer, instead of having to tote around a disk, connect to a network share, or download the client.

• Trying to but I can't sign on. I orignally did an upgrade but it wouldn't recognize my network card. So I did a clean install from a cleanly formated hard drive. Now I can't login. I have tried Administrator with no password which I believe is what it is supposed to be and alot of other combinations to no avail.

• Very easy to initially install. Much planning and configuration seems necessary for Server.

• Very favorably impressed with Win2K Pro, and have converted the entire IS support staff to it. First installation was on a very old, very limited-resource laptop, and it has performed flawlessly, albeit slowly. Limited experience with Win2KServer, since we don't really have any way to test it in a non-production environment. Based on our experience with Win2KPro, however, we're tempted to throw caution to the winds and give it a shot when RC2 arrives.

• Very good overall. Hardware controll is excellent. The setup is easy, but the Active Directory setup could be simplified.

• Very good, Seems to be an improvment on NT4, Active Dir' is Good, - few problems with Recognising cdrom(ide) and Modems- (there one session and after a reboot have gone - when add/remove hardware is used says the device is running ok, and then low and behold IT IS!!) But going in the right direction. I like it.

• Very immature, heavy, viscous, incomplete. Does not offer any new solutions to customers

• Very long install time. Difficult to setup, maintain and master the server functions.

• Very stable and easy to set up, although configuring global settings for users can be trying at times. This is especially true for internet access setup using the admin login and then attempting to set permissions for user internet access.

• Very stable and quick.

• Video is slow to the point of being unexceptible. Machine runs 10% slower with most apps. Was running NT 4.) sp8. PC is PPro 200, 64MB, 4MB PCI video card. Too much fluff for a business OS. I Like the new device manager. Better Hardware management. Keep the Boss button in IE.

• W2000 seems to be a good product but it is extremely slow - even on fast machines!

• WIn2000 seems very stable, but had difficulty recognizing 2 modems (USR Winmodem ISA & PCI).System loads faster and excutes faster than NT40. OFC 2000 shines with this Operating System. Need to fine tune Plug & Play Hardware recognition.

• WIndow 2000 is great!

• Was not as successful as with the windows 95 betas. Applications were not as compatible which caused me to skip testing the server. Still prefer Windows 2000 Professional for small office. Windows 95/98 still too messy for me; but there are no catch 22 applications.

• Was not pleased with lack of support for SoundBlaster Live card. Since this is shipped with new systems and we use training CDs that require sound, NT2000 will not be useful until this industry standard card is supported. Also had some problems with dual booting NT4/NT2000 using our disk fragmentation utilities. Understand that NT2000 uses modified NTFS format but found that it updated drives that we wanted to maintain as NT4 drives. The only reason for dual boot was hardware and software incompatibilities that requires then that NT4 be available.

• We are video and film producers and our needs are a bit different than most who would use the product. Professional: Mostly, Win 2K Professional will provide significant advances over NT 4. Color management and the move to DirectX 7 are significant from our point of view. System wide color management will provide to us for the first time the ability to lock down as much as possible our color output for print jobs. I also expect -- or hope -- that we will be able to integrate color management into or video work flow. DirectX 7 holds the promise of enabling 3D acceleration in our video editing suite for a price considerably less than normal -- $1000-#2000 vs. $6000-$20000. ICS and Dial on Demand are very nice features for our small workgroup. The downside: NTFS 5 is slower than we would want and provides features that we do not really need. We do not expect much to happen in this matter since the OS is meant for a normal business enviroment and these new features, having to do with user management and security, are benifits for this market, the OS' primary market. We need to sustain data transfer rates -- both read and write -- between 15 to 30 megabytes/second. NTFS 5 could prove to require more SCSI storage, which is not cheap. Server: Lacking experience with server setup and management, I thought our preview of beta 3 was a good opportunity to rectify this lack. I managed to set up a server as a primary domain controler. Everything worked well excpept for NAT, which we would want to use if we decided to purchase a server solution. Newsgroup consensus opinion is that NAT fails to resolve names properly for some, us included. That the server was as easy to set up as it was for a rank novice like myself suggests that Server 2K will do well in the SOHO market. DHCP seems to relieve the client workstations of some management chores, thus increasing performance on those machines. We are thus considering a server solution for this reason alone. Overall: B

• We have been unable to get any of our HP DeskJet to work with Server or Professional. And to boot, the HP drivers do not even load on Win2000.

• We like it but we are having some problems with printing options with a Novell 3.12 - we cannot stop banners being produced with every print job. Also we are having problems on a dial up connection we can’t get windows2000 to bring up a post connection terminal window. IE5 crashes occasionally when it never did with NT4

• When I tried to load Win2000 Prof. on this machine, the install pgm told me that it would load, but my video card, sound card and something else would not work since there were no drivers for those componets. Needless to say, I did not proceed with the install. At this rate, not sure when I'll get to start 'testing' this OS. Just not trusting enough to go ahead if it means so much lost time to reload win98, etc.

• Win 2k = very good product, Beta seems to be quite stable, new features are fine

• Windows 2000 Pro is stable. The only problems is that 64MB is barely sufficient to run it. Server is still crappy with practically no practical management tools to manage it. Microsoft cannot expect people to learn how to use their management tools as the learning curve will stop people from deploying Win2k.

• Windows 2000 is the best corporate operating system to date. Beta 3 was difficult to get working without the drivers, however RC1 was great! It is so much more user friendly than NT 4.0.

• Windows 2000 is the best most stable operating system today. We at Eagleheart Multimedia have been very pleased with the new OS and definately will be deploying the RTM throughout our Company and also to our customers.

• Windows2000 Professional is stable and very usable however, hardware support for some devices is not quite so great. Due to the stability and performance I will be upgrading from Windows98SE to Windows2000 Professional after Service Pack1.

• Workstation is a good upgrade. Server is way too complex with AD. Months/years before deployment let alone the turf battles with the Unix folks for Dynamic DNS

• You want like my answer, it all started with 3M, but they just didn't know how to carried (ms} it any further, so our good old boys did, thank heaven. ]I am what I am, Lil'Gin, Alabama, Florida

• bene

• better than 98, better than NT 4.0 , used the upgrade for Windows 98, and a new install on another computer, but i need a driver for my sound card, and i have some problems with the administrators password being lost, and have to occasionaly reset it, on the upgrage only.

• excellent-best op sytem available

• expensive on hardware upgrades

• great good network and dialin behavior. no crashes or system errors. most features seem to work as designed. problems with USB bus using mps 1.4 and needs a DMA 66 driver for ABit BP6 motherboard. in additon fails to power all the way down.

• great products-very stable

• horrible

• i had to buy a new modem to get it to work, the other one was a generic and would not install for anything, it worked fine in 4.0, and my webcam will not run in 2000. other than that i love it, it is very easy to navigate and install new hardware, and i love the device manager. the new accessability features were alot of fun to look at and will be a great asset to anyone with vision problems.

• it is far the easiest to set up. everything runs smoothly and have only found one bug so far that deals with the mouse dropping off when using a KVM switch

• looking good

• m s word has error in " " left is 66 and right is 99 I have ms word 2000 i am looking for help on correcting this. R. Butsch. forgodonlynino@aol

• much easier to manage than nt4. faster and easier setup

• needs another 6 months of bug fixing and usability improvements. Server is still too difficult to use.

• pretty darn cool.

• sucks, no support

• sucks.

• we had many problems in installation.

• we have begun with testing 2000 pro only The server wil be operational next week Our test environment is as follows. We test win 2000 on a production machine. A grafic designer is workig on it. Behide her is an backup machine with win98. All the material is regular transport also to the win98 machine. We did this cause we will you can only test in an real working environment.