Windows 2003

So, who has test driven Windows 2003? Who would want to use it? Would anyone want it for personal use (by that I mean = home computer)? Should it have the same audience as Windows 2000 and XP?

I think the analog is 2K3 is to NT what XP is to 98/ME... 2K3 seems to be their new server edition.

I think 2k5 (longhorn) will be the next client OS.

Haven't tried it, tho. Be interested to hear from someone who has.

I've never tried it, but I discussed it for a few hours with two folks in our IT department (ironically enough, while we were on an all-day support call to M$ that wound up with Micro$oft declaring ANOTHER bug in their FP server extensions package for IIS 5).

They said they were impressed by it's incredible speed when it was used as a file server. Also, IIS 6 came locked down, so rather than trying to race around sticking your fingers in security holes, you had to actually actively enable things placing more of the server security responsibility in the hands of the admins rather than taking it away from them and keeping it in Redmond.

Also, apparently, it's a very stable OS. I'm still waiting to see on the security front though seeing as one of the stupidest design flaws ever is the result of the first critical patch to the 2K3 system.

Stupid hole? Yes. But, I don't think it's necessarily fair to jump down their throats right away... the system, for a Windoze system anyway, has actually held up pretty well so far....