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Why Windows 2000?

(Posted on August 2, 2024 - 10:30 PM)

Why I think Windows 2000 was better at the time compared to Windows XP.

Be specific, please.

You probably already know by now for the billionth time already that Windows 2000 is my favorite version of Windows as I have been very vague about it on why. Well, today's your lucky day as I'll tell you on why Windows 2000 is my favorite version of Windows and nothing comes close to it.

(this blog post contain many technical info that you may not care about, just sayin'.)

1 - A new millennium for Windows NT.

Year 2000, the year many people thought it would be the end for personal computing and computers around the globe, thankfully none of that happened. (unless you wanna count the chaos caused by CrowdStrike in 2024.) Anyway, in 2000, many people were either using Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows NT 4.0. In February, Microsoft released a major update to the Windows NT family, originally called Windows NT 5.0, Windows 2000 hit store shelves and Microsoft ran some commercials about Windows 2000 for a few months after its release. Windows 2000 brought many features from Windows 9x that was originally lacking on Windows NT 4.0, such as native support for Plug and Play, ACPI, as well as introducing new technologies, such as a new display driver framework called XDDM, which according to Microsoft stood for, "Windows 2000 Display Driver Model", where changing display resolution or color depth, doesn't require you to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect, as this was apparent when you first install a display driver and suddenly, 16-bit color mode suddenly switched to 256 or true color mode without a reboot.

Windows 2000 started development back in 1997 and was delayed several times, my theory was due to the development and release of Windows 98 and the whole antitrust lawsuit thing Microsoft faced. Though, that didn't stop the development team to mature Windows 2000 before release. In fact, in early development builds of Windows 2000, Microsoft ported the "IE-Explorer Shell" from a development build of Memphis (Windows 98), and as it matured, so did the Explorer shell on Windows 2000. Microsoft used the time to mature Windows 2000, considering how Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 of being "Built for Total Reliability" and focused more towards business use.

2 - Features we take for granted.

As mentioned before, Windows 2000 brought many features from Windows 9x, but Windows 2000 introduced many features that we still use till this day without knowing it, I'll go over some. First, Device Manager, it's true Windows 9x added device manager before, Windows NT 4.0 lacked it, in fact, installing, upgrading, or even removing drivers from Windows NT 4.0 was challenging to some, such as using the corresponding hardware's applet in Control Panel, like the Sounds applet to install/upgrade/remove sound drivers. Windows 2000 made it easier by offering device manager as part of the Microsoft Management Console suite. Users can easily troubleshoot problems relating to their hardware, upgrade drivers with ease, and uninstalling drivers directly from it, which some of us have to do at some point in time with Windows 10 or Windows 11.

Do you use Hibernation? Well, Windows 2000 first introduced it to Windows NT. How about some visual effects you seen, such as window transparency, window fading, or even the shadow under your mouse cursor? Windows 2000 introduced it. For some tech savvy users, do you use Computer Management to manage user accounts, perform administration actions, etc? You guessed it, Windows 2000 introduced it. In fact, some people thought features of Windows 2000 was first introduced to Windows XP, I don't blame them since some haven't tried Windows 2000 or even heard of it and considering XP came a year later.

Here's a fun trivia, Windows 2000 was the first version of Windows NT to natively support USB storage devices such as USB flash drives. Sure, Windows 98 can read USB storage devices, it wasn't natively supported and you need to apply a patch for it to recognize it. Windows Millennium Edition was the last Windows 9x release to natively support USB storage devices. Many accessibility features were first added to Windows 2000, such as the "On-Screen Keyboard" and Narrator. In fact, Windows 2000 came with built-in text-to-speech capabilities which is apparent in Narrator.

3 - It's not bloated.

Ah yes, bloatware. A thing that annoys many of us (me included), and junk that we don't need, but some are unfortunate enough to deal with it. When you install Windows 2000, it did not come with any bloatware, and you can easily add/remove features in control panel. In fact, it came with less bloat compared to Windows XP. Windows XP featured this nonsense of a program called Windows Messenger, and many nonsense .NET features and popups. Here's a fun trivia's sequal, originally, .NET was a strategy that made heavy use of internet services, like messaging. The strategy ultimately failed and Microsoft later reused the .NET name for their application framework, .NET Framework and dropped the .NET name from services that no longer focus on the .NET strategy, like .NET Passport, becoming simply Passport which a few more years later, would become Microsoft Account.

Because Windows 2000 wasn't as bloated, it took less system resources, which offered better performance in the long run. Don't we all deserve an operating system from Microsoft to not be bloated with crap like Copilot, ClipChamp, and random nonsense? I guess Microsoft will never go back and make a version of Windows with less bloat.

4 - It's future-proof.

This part is really exciting for me to explain, and fully crystallizes my opinions on why Windows 2000 is the best version of Windows in the NT family.

Later versions of Windows that came after Windows 2000 use many parts of code and then some. Windows 2000 laid the framework for Windows XP and now you wonder why people enjoyed Windows XP, it was stable for home users, but what Microsoft didn't tell you is that, all of the great features and stability came from Windows 2000, and due to Microsoft's marketing of Windows 2000 towards businesses, many people were stuck to using Windows Millennium Edition which some have mixed feelings about it, while some sticking to Windows 98 SE and waiting for Whistler (Windows XP's codename) to complete in 2001.

This is where I start to criticize Microsoft on how they handled later versions of Windows. Windows 2000 was a solid and robust system, packing all of the great features from Windows 9x and introducing some new features that later Windows versions include. Windows XP wasn't a big upgrade compared to Windows 2000, sure it was big for home users, some businesses didn't bother to upgrade to Windows XP because of how stable Windows 2000 was at the time. And then Windows Vista came, which had a very rough development cycle and was delayed for 5 years, compared to Windows 2000's 3 years and at least Microsoft made effort on Windows 2000 compared to Windows Vista, which if they could've given Vista 2 more years of development, it'll be a much more solid product than just being a meh of a release from Microsoft, probably from pressure from Apple and its success of Mac OS X.

The important part on how Windows 2000 is future-proof is that, many software that were made for future versions of Windows like XP, Vista, 7 may work on Windows 2000 no problem. Now of course, not every new application will work on Windows 2000, there are some out there who provide patches for it that enables some modern applications to work on Windows 2000, though many programs would use many DLL libraries and system calls that, of course won't be on Windows 2000, but most of them are just useless functions and some can be patched to Windows 2000 for said app to run.

In fact, if you really want to, you could forego your modern Windows install and use Windows 2000 as your primary version of Windows. With enough system patches and updates, you'll be surprised on what you can run on it, like web browsers for example. Of course you won't be getting any new security updates since Microsoft no longer provide new updates since Windows 2000 ended support in 2010. However, because AMD64 (x64, x86-64) wasn't a thing back then, and Intel's Itanium architecture (basically, Intel's version of AMD64, but does not include any x86 binaries and support) never really catch on, you're really limited to 32-bit applications.

Closing.

Hopefully I've covered many parts on why Windows 2000 is my favorite Windows version. Simpler times may not come back and Microsoft won't learn their lesson on what made Windows great. With Microsoft now focusing on trying their hardest to implement AI crap into Windows 11 with Copilot being the "new" Cortana instead of utilizing its engineers to fix their operating system, as if it wasn't clear on what made Cortana on Windows 10 fail to a point Microsoft had to disable code relating to Cortana, I doubt Microsoft will ever do anything to make Windows great. Oh well, better use old software then.

TechnologicalByte

as he slowly looses faith in Microsoft Windows since 2012.

..as he wonders why windows 11 needed to exist to begin with.

...as he hopes he has more free time to do whatever.

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