The Windows 2000 Jinx

Over the past few weeks people have been sending me e-mail condemnations, because I haven't commented on the announcement that Microsoft Windows NT 5.0 will be renamed Microsoft Windows 2000. The reason I haven't commented on this strange concept is because it just seems so weird that I'm still not completely certain I'm not in the middle of a dream.

There are a number of interesting aspects to ponder. First, the unprecedented delays to Windows NT 5.0 indicate to me that something is terribly wrong with the base code, and that all the corporations out there who intend to subscribe to this system better have some insurance. Windows NT, though more crash-proof than Windows 95/98, has peculiar problems including a throughput problem. I first learned about this at a recent NetWorld+Interop show, where all of the gigabit Ethernet vendors said Windows NT doesn't even come close to handling gigabit I/O, and it has to be tweaked to hit 400 Kbps out of any given machine. Meanwhile, Novell has no problem pumping data around at gigabit speeds. I have never seen this information reported anywhere. All you hear about is how Windows NT is going to take over the world. The next thing you know, Windows NT is suddenly Windows 2000.

Which brings us to a more interesting issue. What is to become of Windows 98? Obviously there is no plan to make a Windows 99; it would have been hyped to death by now. It seems as though we are all doomed to Windows 2000 when we eventually upgrade our OSs. But Windows NT (oops, I mean Windows 2000) isn't a cheap bundled-free-with-the-machine kind of operating system. Are we to expect Windows 2000 will be bundled with the $399 PC to be sold in 2001? Heck, it may be $299 by then. Are vendors going to bundle Windows 2000? Since a nonupgrade version of Windows NT 4.0 has a street price of about $250, you have to wonder how anyone (except Microsoft) is going to make any money.

Now I suppose Microsoft can simply sell Windows 98 for the next decade and keep fixing the thousands of bugs in the meantime. But over the past several years, Microsoft has been threatening (oops, I mean promising) that Windows 3.1/95/98 will merge with Windows NT/2000. So I guess the date has been set. I don't know about you, but I'm not particularly happy with the date. If you haven't noticed, it's just a little over a year away.

Worse is the choice of names. Using 2000 in a software program is a jinx, and the whole industry knows this. It began with WordStar 2000. That was the biggest disaster in the history of computing, and despite good reviews, the product sunk fast and the jinx began! I believe there is something screwy about the number 2,000 that writers such as Arthur C. Clarke sensed when he named his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, not 2000. His predictions were wildly optimistic in terms of technological advances, but at least the book and movie were a success. I suspect it would have been a huge flop if the year had been 2000, not 2001.

About now people are reading this and asking whether

• I am a numerological freak; and
• I have a point.

I'm not a numerological freak, but I sense something amiss with the number 2,000, not to mention the looming year 2000 problem. And if I have a point to make, it's simply to ask a question: What is Microsoft thinking? Windows 2000 sounds like a cheesy program no matter how you look at it--jinx or no jinx. Zero thought has gone into this new name; it's so random and dumb. Intel spent a fortune coming up with Pentium and used professional naming companies to do so. The Windows 2000 name was obviously created over a glass of root beer in the company cafeteria by a couple of executives looking for a way out of the Windows NT delays. Unfortunately, the company has painted itself into a marketing corner. Now it must unite Windows 98 with Windows NT, but there is no evidence that Windows NT is near completion.

Last August, the Gartner Group proclaimed that it doesn't expect Windows NT 5 to ship until 2000 and doesn't recommend anyone look at the OS until 2001. Here is the kicker, according to the Gartner Group: "The problem is that NT 5.0 is so complex that testing it will be a long, drawn-out process...

You're talking about a product that went from 5 million lines of code in NT 3.51 to about 35 million lines."

Uh, what? 35 million lines of code? What exactly does this thing do? And how is it supposed to become the operating system for the rest of us? By that I mean how do we find ourselves going from Windows 98 to this monster in a couple of years? Forget about it! This has disaster written all over it. Microsoft had over 3,000 bugs in Windows 95, which was under five million lines of code for sure. Folks, this is becoming a joke. I'm smelling the fiasco called Pink--the dead Apple Mac OS where the developers all bailed out leaving ruination. I remember all the hype that came before the initial release of Windows NT. It was going to take over the desktop. Then as release time drew near, it was going to take over the enterprise. Then when it was released, it took over nothing. Windows NT itself is jinxed. Combining it with the jinxed number 2000 spells doom.