Ian McDonald: I had a bunch of people internally ask me why Windows Server shows it's version as Windows Server 2008 SP1 (for brevity - WS08). I will explain it, but I wanted to use the Writer feature that allows me to insert pictures. Who says anything beyond notepad is a waste of time. Actually, that's me usually...
The history here goes back to problems we had form the split we had when we broke Windows XP from Windows Server 2003 (WS03) way back in 2000.
At the time we had Windows 2000 (Win2k) out in the market & it was being very well received. Especially on the client side which was doing well with corporate desktops. At the same time in the consumer side, we had Windows ME. I never worked on WinME, I have never installed it, & I know nothing about it except what people have told me. I removed what i really think. If you meet me, feel free to ask.
The history here goes back to problems we had form the split we had when we broke Windows XP from Windows Server 2003 (WS03) way back in 2000.
At the time we had Windows 2000 (Win2k) out in the market & it was being very well received. Especially on the client side which was doing well with corporate desktops. At the same time in the consumer side, we had Windows ME. I never worked on WinME, I have never installed it, & I know nothing about it except what people have told me. I removed what i really think. If you meet me, feel free to ask.
Mid 2000, we had a combined release on the rails but the pressure to do a client release for consumer got high. So we forked WinXP from what was to become WS03. On one side, I think we did exactly the right thing. We met the dates required from OEMs for WinXP & closed down the server release in exactly the right way. I believe the longevity of WS03 in market was because we did a load of right things in the end game. I sill think what we knew when we released WinXP in august 2001 it was a great product. It's just that the world changed 2 weeks later...
View: Full Article @ Ian McDonalds Blog
lol, always nice to see the microsoft guys have a sense of humour
So let me get this straight (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding here)... you've called it SP1 so people who say "we'll wait for SP1" will install it straight away?
So let me get this straight (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding here)... you've called it SP1 so people who say "we'll wait for SP1" will install it straight away?
Microsoft's hubris is incredible, do they think corporations are that dumb? "Oh gee, look it's already SP1, let's just replace our entire infrastructure". Now companies will adopt a policy of "only install when it hits SP2" instead. Major corporations don't like buying server sofftware the day they come out and being guinea pigs for it. The fact that Microsoft thinks they can fool their customers in this way is disgusting.
Not that I'm defending MS's naming scheme here, but no major corporation with a sane IT department is going to purchase newly released server software and immediately deploy it into a production environment. More than likely such "major corporations" are going to have MSDN or some kind of MS corporate sales-rep access to evaluate this kind of stuff. I think most early adopters (people who don't bother evaluating it before putting it into production) either 1) know what they're doing (need a key feature, etc) or 2) are completely retarded. Of course given the quality of MCSE's I've seen in the past, number two is probably more common...
So let me get this straight (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding here)... you've called it SP1 so people who say "we'll wait for SP1" will install it straight away?
Microsoft's hubris is incredible, do they think corporations are that dumb? "Oh gee, look it's already SP1, let's just replace our entire infrastructure". Now companies will adopt a policy of "only install when it hits SP2" instead. Major corporations don't like buying server sofftware the day they come out and being guinea pigs for it. The fact that Microsoft thinks they can fool their customers in this way is disgusting.
Oh come on, the guy's clearly joking about that.
Microsoft's hubris is incredible, do they think corporations are that dumb?[/quote]
Don't be foolish. That's called humor. It's labeled as SP1 is because Vista SP1 and Server 2008 share the same kernel, and now the same service packs, moving forward.
As an aside, I've found Server 2003 and now Server 2008 (thus far) to be remarkably good products right out of the starting gate. Although this is anecdotal, I've never had nearly the number of issues with these server OSes that I've run across with their client counterparts.
Right or wrong? I dunno. But that's why, and it makes a certain amount of sense. They've not released until they have a service pack in it, I suppose, in their view.
The truth is that it's sharing the codebase with Windows Vista - which is SP1. Plain and simple.
It makes perfect sense to release Server 2008 as SP1 since its codebase aligned perfectly with Vista SP1. And I'm looking forward to getting some new Win2K8 servers at my company this summer. To hell with that "wait for the first service pack" BS. The operating systems go through a great deal of testing during the beta phase. I have worked with Win2k8 a lot now, and it does seem to be a very solid operating system.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.