LAS VEGAS - Microsoft this week will open the last round of testing on Windows 2000 before the company locks down the final code and ships the product early next year.
At Comdex, Microsoft's top brass said Release Candidate 3 (RC3) of Win 2000 will be sent to some 16,000 top-level beta testers who will pick through the code looking for recall-class bugs. Release candidate software is considered shipping code, but is sent to beta sites for final review. The top-level sites represent less than 3% of some 650,000 beta-testers that have been involved to some degree with Win 2000 beta testing up until this point.
While most IT executives won't review RC3, they should be aware of the upgrade path to the final release of Win 2000. Microsoft is only supporting upgrades from RC2 or RC3 to Win 2000, not from earlier beta and alpha releases. Microsoft has only tested migrations from RC2 and RC3 to Win 2000. "The only tricky scenario will be for those that went to Beta 3 or RC1 and stayed there," says Craig Beilinson, product manager for Win 2000. He says users can upgrade from those releases of the beta code, but that Microsoft will not support those moves.
Microsoft officials say final Win 2000 code, including the desktop Professional edition, and the Server and Advanced Server editions, will be released to manufacturing by year-end. Microsoft expects six to eight weeks will be needed to press the CDs and pack the product boxes.
"You can count on Feb. 17," says Senior Vice President Jim Allchin, referring to the ship date Microsoft recently announced. He says the new operating system software has been through extensive deployments, including within Microsoft, where nearly 54,000 machines are running the software in production. Allchin says Microsoft has run stress tests on Win 2000, including simulations where 1,500 machines process three months worth of transactions overnight.
Allchin says partners, including OEMs, independent software vendors and those in the Joint Development Program have signed off on Win 2000 and that device drivers and applications are in place.
Microsoft officials say only four applications so far have earned the Certified for Windows 2000 logo, but that some 5,000 would be compatible with the software when it ships. Microsoft says 9,000 device drivers are ready for Win 2000
With RC3, Microsoft says it has neither added nor subtracted any features like the company did with RC2. With that release, Microsoft withdrew component load balancing and channeled it into a separate server.
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