Just to add another note to the discussion.. M$oft just announced that, effective in Sept 2002, none of the Device Driver Development kits for Win9X, WinNT OR Win2K will be available for purchase or download.
Now, they are supposed to be moving to a "unified" driver development kit, but experienced developers suspect that there will be many things that will get lost in the translation. What this ultimately means is that most companies will likely stop developing drivers for Win2K, WinNT (and Win9X) for new hardware, and only develop for WinXP. Even though Win2K may still be in heavy use. So, if/when you want to upgrade to some improved hardware you may find that you have no choice but to move to WinXP just for the driver support. Remember that Billg plays "chess" and is always thinking way ahead of the Government, and his target market, as far as how he can extend his monopoly. By making it more difficult for new hardware companies entering the market place to develop drivers for "legacy" M$oft OS's he can try to heard his target market to XP. And, by assisting with the so called Digital Rights Management developments he may also be driving a nail in the Open Source coffin for Linux, since it is impossible for an Open Source OS to truly be written so that DRM could not be removed by an end user. That coupled with his patents for the "secured PC" may make it virtually impossible for any competing OS to exist if the "secured PC" catches on. If you love XP and M$oft that's great, if not then be sure that you have an effective equipment "spares" inventory, including software, going forward. As far as security updates for M$oft OS's, you can skirt a number of the issues by making sure that your EDA machine doesn't have direct access to the Internet, as was described earlier by another user. I've been moving most everything else that I do over to Linux, and I only have a couple of actual M$oft based apps that I still don't have a good alternative to, but that will change over the next year or so. But it is more difficult in some environments to move to Linux. Burt ************************************************************************ * Tracking #: 5B5C95A324C7284C95DE4E7B8B97E27781DB95C9 * ************************************************************************ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
