Mar. '00 Headlines

We here at CALROG.COM must congratulate Microsoft for one thing: providing the public with a new operating system. Windows 2000, the business operating system that claims to have "all the bells and whistles" you've been looking for-- it's finally made its way into the mainstream.

Are there advantages to this operating system? Yes.

Are there some disappointments that came along with Win2000? Most certainly.

CALROG.COM got grasp of Windows 2000 Professional approximately one week before its launch date (February 17th). We made some examinations and observations with the DOS-independent OS, and overall the bad slightly overpowers the good.

Playing devil's advocate, there are, without fail, some good points with NT5. The interface is identical to that of Win98 and NT 4.0. The start menu and "what-nots" are all still there, meaning you don't need to learn a whole new GUI like you did between 3.1 and 95. Menu options get a whole new form of animation-- the scrolling effect has been replaced by a ghost-like "fade in". Also, the search options for the operating system are on-par with typical business standards. The whole system (including networking) is integrated into the search field, making documents easier to find with the addition of a three-pane finding format.

Unfortunately, the Windows 2000 did have a lot of disappointments. While running the movie Crash (with James Spader, Holly Hunter), DVD output gave blockiness and frequently crashed. This was found to be odd, considering we were using a modern ATI Rage128 card with 8 MB VRAM, and a relatively responsive K6-2/500 MHz processor. The problem was not video card related, because the adapter was switched with an ATI 3D card and gave the same poor-quality results. Obviously, Windows 2000 did not live up to its promise of great hardware support. Boot-up time for this O/S was nothing short of a disaster. We had to literally wait an extra 30 seconds to boot the same machine with Win2000 rather than its Win98 brother. This really disenchanted us all, making us want to choose Windows 98 from the boot-up menu every single time... The wait time is deplored and the hardware support is sketchy for Win2000. Although, there should be hope in the future. Microsoft should pick up on its mistakes and release patches. Either that, or we're gonna air more dirty laundry here at CALROG.COM.

All and all, if one wants this business OS, it would be best to invest the money around six months from now. That should give big brother the time to release service packs and update all the glitches. Cosmetically, the OS looks fine. However, don't judge Win2000 by its good looks. Right now, it's essentially a pretty blonde girl with absolutely nothing upstairs.

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