Windows 2000 - Best. Windows. Ever... Even still.

I am not one of those fools who gets all misty when reminiscing about old computers and the software they run. Not even close. I remember Windows 3.1 getting being crappy, enigmatic and unstable, but it was all we had if we did not have the three thousand bucks to drop on a crappy, less enigmatic and unstable Mac - let's be honest. Windows 95 came along and slowly, but surely got more stable (yet still crashed occasionally). I remember being so proud of the Windows 95 OSR 2 version, which was not for sale in stores without a new computer, that I "borrowed" from my old job and used, and used, and used. I skipped Windows 98 completely at home, but it was a necessary evil at work because I needed ICM (color matching) and Windows NT which was deployed at the work did not have ICM. The greens looked blue and red was a toss up.

Then Windows 2000 came. It had ICM. Red was red.

2000 was good. 2000 was very good. 2000 IS STILL GOOD. I know with Vista being released Win2K is 2 versions old. So the question becomes what can't Win2K do?

Nothing that matters (as far as I can tell, at least).

Oh, it can't run Internet Explorer 7 or Office for Vista. It does not have the built in firewall of Windows XP (or the better Service Pack 2 Firewall). No built in anti-virus. End of list. Well... you get Firefox, OpenOffice or something else faster, ZoneAlarm and AVG. Done.

Actually I am hard pressed to find non-Microsoft programs that run on XP that do not run on Win2K. You tell me - what can't Win2K do?

Because I am not one to only say and not do, I will tell you about places I put Win2K recently and had tremendous success. Under Parallels on Mac OS X, Win2K works wonderfully since Win2K has a smaller memory footprint than Windows XP and an order of magnitude memory footprint smaller than Windows Vista. Also older hardware can sing with Win2K. I have an old Dell Optiplex GX 110 (900ish Mhz) that chugs happily with Win2K (Side-note: the GX-110 Intel based on board video sucks - and you get only 2 PCI slots, for expansion - pity, because it has a great form factor.)

If you can't use Ubuntu, for what ever reason, I say go Win2K.

So, an eight year old operating system that was done so well, it can compete, and compete well, with more modern OS's (if you look beyond bells and whistles.)

What's an old OS to do to get noticed around here?