Opinion: Microsoft could, and should, create Windows 2000 Consumer

The recent debates about the future of Windows 98 and the release delays ofWindows 2000 have gotten me thinking about the viability of a Windows 2000Consumer Edition (this could also be called Windows 2000 Personal Edition; pick your poison). Microsoft's goals for Windows 2000, and the subsequent code and feature bloat caused by implementing those goals, leave the near future of the consumer line in the hands of the Windows 98 team, which is currently working on its first Windows 98 OEM Service Release (OSR), which will be provided to hardware manufacturers such as Dell and Compaq when its ready. Windows OSR products are designed to provide bug fixes, some new features (IE 5.0 instead of IE 4.0, for example) and new driver support,and Microsoft has never--to this point, anyway--sold an OSR product in the retail market because of the support headaches such as product would cause.

So where does this leave Microsoft's consumer-level customers, which haveto represent their largest or second-largest customer base by number? TheWindows 98 OSR release won't be available at retail, meaning that existingWindows 98 customers will need to download all of the features and bugfixes included in this product via the Windows Update Web site. This canbe a daunting task, given the sheer size of these components, especially IE5.0, which can run to over 50 MB. And if Microsoft is serious about gettingIE 5.0 into the hands of the most users, it might consider providing a better form of delivery to its hundreds of millions of customers.

The future of Windows 98, at this point in time anyway, is wrapped into aseries of OSR releases that will occur over the next few years. Bug fixes,product updates, and some new features will appear, as always, on the Windows Update site. Meanwhile, Windows 2000 will--eventually, they tellus--be released, causing lots of confusion among those who are "stuck" withWindows 2000. I mean, Windows 2000 sounds newer than Windows 98: Won't mostconsumer think they need to "upgrade" to Windows 2000?

If you've been following WinInfo for a while, you may remember stories fromlast Fall where I mentioned that Microsoft would be consolidating the NTand Windows products. This was to have happened in the NT 6.0 time frame,however, not NT 5.0. Had Windows 2000 been released as Windows NT 5.0, there would have been far less confusion in the marketplace: Consumers would not have expected a clean Windows 98-to-Windows NT 5.0 upgrade andthey would have been content in the knowledge that they were running thelatest and greatest version of Windows.

The strangest thing about the name change is the timing. Last August, I attended a press Workshop for the then-Windows NT 5.0 and the overwhelmingmessage was simple: Windows NT 5.0 is for corporations only, they said.Consumer desktops will want to wait for a new consumer OS, which was thenexpected in 3 years or so. They even went a bit further: Because of thedifferences in key system files between Windows NT and Windows 9x, Microsoft would only guarantee that Windows NT 4.0 could be upgraded to Windows NT 5.0; a Windows 98-to-Windows NT 5.0 upgrade would be somewhatsupported, but would not always work. And when it did work, many of theapplications already on the system would need to be reinstalled. Frankly,it all made a lot of sense.

Then the name change was announced and everything got turned upside-down. Now that Windows NT is called "Windows," it's only natural that consumersand other customers would assume that a Windows 98-to-Windows 2000 upgradewould work, just as Windows 95-to-98 worked.

It won't.

So here's Microsoft, lost in a sea of product delays, creeping featuritis,and massive code bloat. The Windows 2000 Professional product, which usedto be known as NT 5.0 Workstation, will not be found acceptable to mostconsumers and home users. It doesn't support as much hardware as Windows 98and it doesn't support key consumer technologies such as WebTV for Windows.What it does support is a mess of corporate features that have no place inthe home, such as advanced security and encryption, and features that willonly work when a Windows 2000 Server is found elsewhere on the network, such as IntelliMirror and Active Directory. Not exactly the same as theinclusion of AOL and Online Services in Windows 98, is it?

So here are the problems with Windows 2000, from a consumer's perspective:

So what could be done to "fix" Windows 2000 and make it appropriate for a consumer-level OS that the vast majority of Microsoft's customers couldactually use? Consider the following:

Essentially, a Consumer Edition of Windows 2000 would be far easier to makethen the bloated half products they're working on now. And there would befar more interested in it than there is at the corporate level because those people are more concerned about Y2K right now than Win2K. If Microsoft had any guts, it would publicly admit that it bit off more thanit could chew and just release this stuff in steps. The first step, ofcourse, would be to reevaluate the features that are being added to the OS.Add Active Directory in Windows 2000 OptionPack 1 and IntelliMirror in OptionPack 2, or whatever. Don't delay the whole OS over this stuff. IfWindows 2000 was easier to deploy, corporations might just go for it thissummer.

Of course, the problems with a Consumer Edition of Windows 2000 are legion.The most glaring problem with this strategy, of course, is Windows 98.Microsoft spent over three years and countless billions developing thisproduct, and they want to get paid for it. The company plans on a specificlifetime for each of its products and that lifetime is designed to make itpay for itself. If Windows 98 is sent out to the pasture in Q1 2000, it will probably lose money, or at least not even come close to making thecash that Windows 95 did. It can't be understated how important it is forMicrosoft to issue those press releases declaring what a success Windowsis for them: It helps the corporate pride and it makes the people workingthere think they're doing something right.

Get over it. People are starting to look at alternatives, such as Linux,and it's only a matter of time before RedHat or someone similar comes upwith an OS that is as easy to install as Windows. Don't give them thatchance.

I'll conclude this massive essay with one other remote possibility. As Yodasaid in the Empire Strikes Back (hey, I'm a geek, what did you think I wasgoing to quote, Shakespeare?), "there is another." Microsoft also hasanother operating system, Windows CE, that would make a fine consumer product. As with Windows 2000 Consumer, the problems with this particularstrategy are also legion: Windows CE is completely incompatible with today's Windows apps and it runs on a confusing array of hardware. WhereWindows CE comes in, however, is on non-PC devices, which are expected tosomeday outnumber PCs in homes. A set-top box attached to the TV, runningWindows CE, would make a powerful statement if it was done right.

Nah.

--Pau