So, Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 is available. Microsoft representatives have repeatedly stated that Beta 3 is “feature complete.” Beta 3 of any Microsoft product is typically a harbinger of that product’s imminent arrival, so unless things go horribly wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft release Windows 2008 to manufacturing by October or November of this year, at the latest.
And, you see, that’s why I’m worried.
I’m really looking forward to another version of Windows Server. To someone who writes, consults, and speaks about Microsoft technology, any new goodies means new grist for the mill—new fun stuff to play with, you know. But I’m actually not in any rush to get Windows 2008, given the choice between an incomplete product shipped “on time” (by whose clock, I always wonder?) and a trouble-free version shipped a bit later.
I’m a bit gun-shy about Windows 2008 because of what we just saw with Windows Vista. In its impatience to get Vista out to the market, Microsoft shipped a product that doesn’t have many huge bugs—at least not in my experience—but has a zillion little annoyances. For example, Vista lacks Vista-compatible Active Directory (AD) administrative tools (and don’t you dare suggest that I use Remote Desktop to access my domain controllers—DCs—that’s a workaround, not an answer). Or what about the small-but-essential fact that adding an external manifest to a legacy program in hopes of solving a User Account Control compatibility problem works sometimes but not always, thanks to a glitch in the disk-caching algorithm? Or the fact that I can’t get my Windows Server 2003 systems into Vista’s Network Map because there's no Link Layer Topology Discovery responder for Windows 2003? (There’s one for Windows XP, but it doesn’t load on Windows 2003.) . . .
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