http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19021 By Mike Magee in Dublin 11 October 2004 HERE IN DUBLIN, not too many miles away from the forbidden zone - Intel's Leixlip fab - Annette Jump, a senior analyst at Gartner has delivered a presentation on what corporations and system builders should do given the current confusion over Windows clients. Jump didn't say this but the Gartner graph of Microsoft support certainly suggests that if you're confused as a corporation or an end user, it's not really your fault at all. Jump said that corporations and other Windows users should push Microsoft to introduce similar features in XP SP2 to reassure corporations deploying Windows 2000 and wondering which step to take. She said that with an increased focus on security, Microsoft was forced to release Windows XP SP2, which is not a typical service pack. Sixty per cent of it is security, 20 per cent are fixes, and 20 per cent are functional additions, said Jump. But there are some problems with SP2 - it crashes some of the applications. She said that Gartner believed only three per cent of shrink wrapped applications will be broken by SP2, and five per cent of custom written apps. Given the large number of apps, that might not matter too much, she said. But we suppose this is a little like someone breaking a leg. Most people's legs take eight weeks to heal, but some people's legs take years to heal. That might be a minor percentage of the whole, but for the minority it's 100 per cent. Corporations need to thoroughly test all application s before installing SP2. Microsoft hasn’t delivered anything like this level of security for Windows 2000. She said that users, whether corporate or system integrator users, should persuade Microsoft to offer similar functionality in Windows 2000 - which, after all, many companies moved to to escape software compatibility problems with Windows 98, et al. Companies should introduce new machines with XP, rather than wait for Longhorn, by introducing operating systems into the enterprise which have current and future Windows supported clients. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
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