Now that 2010 is officially half over, you might want to keep in mind a few upcoming dates in “Microsoft-world” that could be important to your environment.
7/13/10 – Mid-July marks the end of life for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2. If you have either of those OSes running, remember they will no longer have updates developed for them. Its time to get those workstation upgraded to a more recent service pack for XP or consider Windows 7 if that is something feasible. I’ll admit, I’ve still got one Windows 2000 server hanging out there – I don’t know if I’ll make it!
10/22/10 – XP Home will no longer be sold on netbooks. In my organization netbooks are either reinstalled with XP Professional once they arrive, or we could consider Windows 7 for some users, so it's not much of a concern personally. For those of you making recommendations to friends and family, I’d go with Windows 7. There’s not really a good argument otherwise when it comes to home users.
With so many other Microsoft products touting "2010" (SharePoint, Exchange, Office...) it's easy to get sidetracked by things that are new and shiny. Don't forget to be ready to clean up after some of those things are reaching their end of life. Every environment has a machine or two that lags behind, don't let an end of life issue turn into a security one.
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Amazing how time flies, and even more amazing how servers can be neglected. The day I started my current role (about 3 years ago) I found over forty Windows NT 4 servers running and double that number running Windows 2000. They were all business critical servers that could not be shut down. Happy to say we just upgraded the last one from both lists 10 minutes ago! No joke.
ReplyDeleteCharlie - Congrats on freeing yourself from all those legacy servers. One day, I hope to say the same!
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