Microsoft: IE 7 is Coming! And If You’re Not Running XP It Will Only Cost You $100

Posted on February 15, 2005

Scoble and the IE blog break the news: Internet Explorer 7 is on the way.

BUT: only for users of Windows XP SP2. Those of us still on Win2K get… weasel words:

I’ve also gotten questions about support for Windows 2000. Right now, we’re focused on XP SP2. We’re actively listening to our major Windows 2000 customers about what they want and comparing that to the engineering and logistical complexity of that work. That’s all I can say on that topic.

I’m sure this has nothing to do with the upcoming end of mainstream support for Windows 2000 in the Windows lifecycle roadmap (Win2K Pro goes into “extended support” only on June 30).

“Extended support” means “no more patches or service packs except for urgent security issues”, so this is probably the harbinger of Microsoft’s push to get all us laggards onto WinXP. Never mind that 2K and XP are architecturally, essentially, the same OS, and that limiting new releases to XP only is an artificial limitation of the most obvious kind.

I already dual-boot at home between Fedora and Win2K, and I can do everything in Fedora I can do in Windows except play some games. If the curtain is gonna go down on Win2K, I’m more inclined to switch to Linux full time (or yes, Sandy, a Mac) than to pay up for an XP license just because Microsoft thinks it’s time I oughta.