Category:Windows 2000
Technical Details
Windows 2000 is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and the first widely-available NT-based Windows Distribution. It was aimed at the business sector and thus was widely used in offices and servers rather than homes. To make up for this, Microsoft released Windows ME around the same time, which was aimed at the home market, but ME's lack of stability meant that 2000 stayed around quite a bit longer. Indeed, the professional, sturdy OS was supported for 10 years, rather long given the lifecycle of some OSes. While it was initially the most secure OS that Microsoft had ever released, some ambitious individuals took this as a challenge, and as a result several hard-hitting viruses were created specifically to target it. While it was succeeded by Windows XP in 2001 for desktops and Windows Server 2003 in 2003 for servers, Microsoft continued to release security patches for it until the end of its lifecycle in 2010.
Windows 2000 features upgrades to the GUI of NT, improved support for users with disabilities, encryption, improved system management tools, and several features present in the Windows 98 line, such as Internet Tools (Outlook Express, IE 5, and others), and extended plug and play support. Windows 2000 was supposed to be adapted into a home version, codenamed Windows Neptune. Neptune saw the release of a few betas, but sadly never made it out of test lab, and it was eventually integrated into Whistler, which later became Windows XP.
Released in 2000 as the successor to Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 was marketed as the most reliable and secure version of Windows to date; a fact that generally held true as far as reliability goes, but unfortunately, its security was quickly compromised by many major viruses being created for it. As a result, although it was succeeded by Windows XP for desktops and Windows Server 2003 for servers, Microsoft continued to release security patches for it regularly until they ended support on 13 July 2010; over 10 years after the original release.
