“Microsoft Corp. wants software and device driver vendors to
write code that’s well tuned and tested so that Windows 2000 —
under a lot of pressure to be stable — doesn’t fall victim to
third-party sloppiness.”
“In pursuit of its goal, Microsoft has mandated… Drivers be…
certified. …a more stringent specification to earn an ‘Optimized
for Windows 2000’ logo. …highest-end Windows 2000 DataCenter will
run only on the systems that have been placed on a “gold” hardware
compatibility list…”
“A survey of corporate information technology buyers released
last week by IDC revealed deep user concerns about Windows 2000’s
reliability, and that could slow adoption.”
“But… Microsoft’s push to get vendors to build
Windows 2000 optimized code will force users to upgrade,
because a Windows 2000-optimized application will no longer run on
Windows NT 4.0.”