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WINDOWS 2000 BETA 3 RELEASE SUMMARY

from The Sunbelt Software Team

Well, MS announced it and they actually did it. Win2K Beta 3 has been
released to production. That means it will slowly filter through a
multitude of channels to the 670,000 beta testers in a 4 to 6 week
period. You can even get your own copy for 60 bucks. They will spend
about 40 million dollars to get everyone trained on it. The High-End
version ('Windows 2000 Datacenter') beta will ship later this year.

Beta 3 will be shipped to 430,000 customers, 140,000 developers and
100,000 channel partners. And that does _not_ include the amount that
will ship on machines with Beta 3 preloaded by manufacturers like IBM
and Dell. Microsoft's spokesperson said Beta 3 is feature complete
but we all know better. The first Service Pack will contain a lot of
code that did not make it in time. Also, MS will post a few Release
Candidates (RC's) during the rest of the year until the actual code
goes gold. They expect new RC's about every two months.

It looks a bit like Microsoft tries to treat Beta 3 like finished code.
A lot of companies are already telling the market they are supporting
it. But there are not all that many users out there that proclaim they
will run it. We have a version of Beta 3 RC1 in house. It is pretty
stable, but booting takes forever and we're interested in seeing how
that is with the latest Beta 3.

Laura DiDio, Windows NT analyst with Giga Information Group says the
beta may appear stable. She cautions however that it needs to be up
and running in environments that are as close as possible to real
production before everyone knows if the code still has minefields that
need to be debugged.

Earlier Sunbelt surveys have shown that only a very small part of the
market is going to deploy Win2K immediately. Most of the companies we
talk to think Q2-2000 at the earliest, and have said they want to see
Service Pack 1 before they do any large roll-out.

Bill Gates will insist as usual that Microsoft eats its own dog food.
That means Beta 3 will be deployed into production environments
throughout the MS worldwide operation, but _when_ is not known yet.
They recently said that some of their internal IT infrastructure bas
been upgraded to W2K. A limited amount of MS-employees that log into
the network are now authenticated by Windows 2000 and Active Directory.

Microsoft invites everyone to a free Microsoft TechNet training event,
where they offer help to install and deploy Windows 2000 Professional
and Windows 2000 Server Beta 3. With live discussions, demos, and
videos, they give you step-by-step information on deploying W2K. To
register for the event: http://events.microsoft.com/events/windows2000

The two most complained about problems regarding NT reliability (too
many reboots and BSOD's) are going to be addressed in W2K as well.
Microsoft has identified third-party drivers, virtual device drivers
and rogue DLL's as the main culprits that cause crashes. TSR's are
also mentioned as causing trouble. They will take measures to stop
that from happening. One is a driver verification system to create
"digitally signed drivers" that are guaranteed to work in W2K boxes.
This _does_ mean some legacy windows code will no longer run. Better
test carefully.

To get the most from W2K, you will need to upgrade all your clients.
The decision if that is worth it needs to be carefully looked at.
Older PC's with Windows 3.x, 95/98 or OS/2 clients will not be able
to take advantage of the Active Directory (global directory) service,
or the new IntelliMirror. (user configuration sits on server, not
workstation so user can log on anywhere and get their own settings)

Also, W2K is picky about the hardware it supports. Make sure the
stuff you get is on the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) W2K
requires some beefy machines. It's a memory hog so make sure you
got enough. They say 64Meg RAM. Forget it, better make it 128!
For a Workstation, count on a MINIMUM configuration of:
- 400 Mhz Pentium II or higher
- MS-certified BIOS
- 128 MB RAM
- Minimum 8 Gig hard disk
- W2K ready network interface card
- Do a clean install from scratch, forget about any upgrades

New Stuff in W2K Professional (workstation)
- Broader application and device support than the beta 2 version.
- Enhanced power management support,
- New support tools and numerous usability enhancements.
New Stuff in W2K Server
- IntelliMirror(TM) management technologies,
- Enhancements to the Active Directory(TM) directory service,
- Improved COM+,
- Terminal Server is integrated.
New Stuff in Windows 2000 Advanced Server
- Windows Load Balancing Services,
- COM+ load balancing
- Rolling upgrade support for server clusters. That improves
the availability and scalability of the server.

A last seemingly nifty feature is a CPU Quota tool that will
place memory limits on applications. I'd like to have a look
at that and see what it really does.

You can evaluate the Windows 2000 Corporate Preview Kit at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/preview/order.asp.

Next newsletter we'll talk about NT Server migration to W2K.

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