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The Roadmap
for the Desktop Environment: Windows 2000
By
Peter Mok
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Introduction
Following the public
release of Windows 2000, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) had
set up a Windows 2000 Task Force to study the possibility of deploying
the Windows 2000 Professionals (W2K Prof) or the Windows
ME (Win ME, to be released soon according to Microsoft (MS))
as the next desktop environment, and Windows 2000 Server
as the departmental server environment. The integration between
the desktop and server side will also be examined. As to the Windows
2000 Server, the task force will study the new Active Directory
design as compared with our existing NT Domain architecture, and
perform testing on Windows 2000 Server. However, in this article
we shall only concentrate on the description of our plan for implementing
W2K Prof/Win ME as our next desktop environment.
As W2K Prof
is not a direct upgrade from our current desktop environment namely
Windows 95/Windows 98 [ref 1], there are a lot of differences
in terms of user support, application support, system administration
and usage between the two. In this regard, the Task Force will
emphasise the carrying out of an in-depth evaluation and design
for the upgrade to ensure full compatibility [ref 2] with the
existing environment as well as a smooth migration for each user
who normally has various hardware configuration and software requirements.
Since this is a very complicated and time-consuming task, we will
expect the first pilot test to be launched six months after the
study has been initiated, and the whole process to be completed
within a year’s time [ref 3]. Meanwhile, users are urged
to upgrade their PC hardware configuration before the migration
actually takes place.
Benefits of the Upgrade
W2K Prof is an upgrade from Windows
NT workstation. On the one hand, we see that this new release
has great benefits to both the end users and the supporting people
like us. On the other hand, the transition involves major changes
from our current Windows 95/98 environment. Although Windows ME
is still not yet released, similar benefits and complications
are expected. Among the many new features and benefits of W2K
Prof, a few significant ones are described below.
W2K Prof has better task management
with multiprocessor support and can provide a more stable and
manageable environment than Windows 95/98. It is believed that
its features will be further enhanced when the first service pack
[ref 4] or the enhancement version becomes available. The W2K
Prof version also has significant performance gain over the Windows
95/98 version.
The W2K Prof desktop has the language
support based upon Unicode. This language support has already
been incorporated in the MS IE and Office 2000 and is well received
by users. Besides the basic language support feature, MS has added
more Chinese input methods. By providing the latter on the operating
system (OS) level, any software vendor or developer can thus use
the feature to provide multilingual support in their applications.
New devices and standards emerge
in a rapid pace. Although drivers may also be available for older
Windows OS, these devices are best supported by the newer versions
of Windows products. Users will benefit most from the new versions
whose architecture has adopted the latest standards and technology
such as IEEE 1394, USB and AGP support. The new Windows versions
also contain enhanced features to support notebooks [ref 5], including
power management ACPI support, the Synchronization manager, the
Encrypting File System (EFS) and hot-swapping of PC cards.
Our Evaluation
The Windows 2000 task force is charged
with the following objectives:
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To study the compatibility
of W2K Prof and Win ME (when released) with hardware and software
currently in use.
-
To study and recommend
the strategy of desktop OS support to the management for consideration.
E.g. selected OS platform(s) for focused support with the possibility
of outsourcing the support and implementation (in terms of budget,
manpower, difficulties, etc.), freezing the support for certain
OS platform(s) and the schedule.
-
To study, recommend
and implement the W2K Prof/Win ME support architecture(s) for
Student LAN and Staff LAN with an ultimate objective to integrate
with the Intranet environment of the University. This should
include studying the suitability of W2K Prof/Win ME as a desktop
OS for staff and students and the amount of effort involved
migrating from Win98/Win95.
-
To study, recommend
and implement the security support for W2K Prof/Win ME as a
desktop environment.
-
To study and recommend
the approach(es) for either fresh installation of W2K Prof/Win
ME or upgrading from Win95/98.
-
To review and recommend
the standards and tools for working under the W2K Prof/Win ME
and Intranet environments. This includes the browsers, plug-in
and user interface standards.
-
To study, recommend
and implement Chinese support under the W2K Prof./Win ME desktop
environment.
In the end, the Task Force will be
required to recommend either the W2K Prof or Win ME as the default
platform to support. This is indeed an extremely difficult task
because it involves in-depth testing on the compatibility with
the network settings, the Intranet environment, the administrative
systems, software installation and utilities for managing the
environment we are currently using in Windows 95/98. It may be
necessary to tailor them to support the W2K Prof/Win ME environment.
User training, support training and user documentation have to
be prepared. Since the expected PC configuration should at least
possess 128MB memory [ref. 6] and a Pentium II processor, many
staff PCs and student PCs may not be powerful enough for the migration.
Similar to the previous implementation
of Windows 98, the new environment will be launched to the students
initially by making it available in the CSC Student Terminal Area.
Thereafter, we will launch a pilot implementation to selected departments
before proceeding to a campus-wide implementation. Hopefully by
then, we shall also be able to migrate our staff LAN environment
from Windows NT to the Windows 2000 Server/Windows 2000 Datacenter
with better support for security, directory, file, web, print and
other services.
References
