Wednesday, October 30, 2002
Microsoft Takes First Step to Abandoning Win9x Code Entirely
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 04:42 PM
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-963777.html
The latest beta of Office 11 works on two operating systems, Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP (Home and Pro.) With ActiveSync 3.5, Office XP, Money 2003 and a few other apps, Microsoft has been weaning customers off of Windows 95 but this is the first move to abandon an OS as recent as Windows ME which is only 2 years old.
The problem for MS has been that Windows 95 still had some Windows 3.x and DOS code in it and Win98, Win98SE and WinME just built on that. Windows NT has always been infinitely more stable and MS finally killed Win9X in 2001 with the release of Windows XP, an OS that has deep roots in Windows NT and shares only a look and feel with Win9x.
In the long run, this should be good. Office XP has so much code that installs for Win9x and other that installs for WinNT based OSs. This will allow the Office team to focus on essentially one operating system, which will lead to greater stability, I hope. If this is an indication of where things are headed, look for other Microsoft apps like ActiveSync, Money, Project, etc. to follow suit.
The latest beta of Office 11 works on two operating systems, Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP (Home and Pro.) With ActiveSync 3.5, Office XP, Money 2003 and a few other apps, Microsoft has been weaning customers off of Windows 95 but this is the first move to abandon an OS as recent as Windows ME which is only 2 years old.
The problem for MS has been that Windows 95 still had some Windows 3.x and DOS code in it and Win98, Win98SE and WinME just built on that. Windows NT has always been infinitely more stable and MS finally killed Win9X in 2001 with the release of Windows XP, an OS that has deep roots in Windows NT and shares only a look and feel with Win9x.
In the long run, this should be good. Office XP has so much code that installs for Win9x and other that installs for WinNT based OSs. This will allow the Office team to focus on essentially one operating system, which will lead to greater stability, I hope. If this is an indication of where things are headed, look for other Microsoft apps like ActiveSync, Money, Project, etc. to follow suit.
