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To: Jack Whitley who wrote (29364)	12/20/1999 11:42:00 AM
From: PJ Strifas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Windows2000 native mode is what you are referring to. This means that all clients and workstations on a network are Windows2000. Components such as IntelliMirror need to work in native mode only. According to your numbers and theory, you are correct in assuming that it will be some time before everyone makes the switch. Taking this into account, AD will have a more uphill climb than expected. Peter J Strifas

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (29364)	12/21/1999 2:24:00 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello Jack, You bring up some interesting points about Win NT v4.0 today ... and you have some good questions. One of the important factors that I see related to the numbers that you posted is the adoption rate of Win98. It appears that Win98 has become the largest percentage of workstations used ... and is even a greater number that I would have thought. This causes me to believe that when Microsoft decides to do so, the migration to, and new sales of, Windows2000 might occur at a rate faster that I would think ... Obviously we would ahve to get a better idea of who the customer base is where these stats were taken, but I am impressed that Microsoft was able to get so many of these folks to Win98. You asked a couple of questions: > With the resource requirements of Windows 2000, does this mean a > mass upgrade of hardware as well across business America to take > advantage of the new value offered by Win 2000? I haven't read the exact requirements of Win2000 vs. WinNT v4.0 ... but I'm not sure if they are that different. And if they are not, then I'm not sure that much upgrade is going to be necessary. I run NT on a variety of machines, including older/slower Pentiums (100Mhz/133Mhz/166Mhz) with limited memory (64MB or less). If I compare it to Win95 on those boxes, it's a little slower. But if I were to compare the two OSs on a faster box - say Pentium 300MHZ+ with 64MB-128MB ... NT is extremely usable. I believe that the boxes being bought today are going to easily run Win2000 ... and most of the boxes bought over the last several years. And that there are numerous value propositions on using Win2000 on the desktop that will help to drive adoption in the corporate environments on desktops in the near term. I'm not sure that this will also drive a mass migration of server technologies to Win2000 ... > Is there a desktop version of Windows 2000 that consumers will be > forced to adopt via preload, to speed adoption as per Win98 above? While listening to several recent Microsoft employees speaking at various events, they have made it very clear that they are providing a "business" or "corporate" product ... not consumer. A group of us has been discussing this, and we have been trying to analyze why they would repeat this over and over ... some of the reasons might be: 1. Limited/incomplete video and DirectX support ... this would limit the "video gaming" use of Win2000. 2. Limited/incomplete driver support ... this would limit the OS on what hardware is supported. Especially on older machines and legacy hardware. 3. Ease of use ... they might not have a variety of the "Wizards" done for novice users to do some things ... 4. Lack of some "big bang" to excite users ... we have discussed whether Microsoft is looking for the "killer app" to help propel Win2000 into the consumer space. So I'm not expecting Microsoft to push consumers this direction yet, but after the first service pack for Win2000, I'll expect to see Microsoft start to move in this direction and to try and consolidate their OS offering even further. Win2000 seems to be the strategic product here ... and it is getting powerful ... Scott C. Lemon