Sidebar: Microsoft's New Browser Plan Miffs Win2k Users

Computerworld - This month's announcement by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates that Internet Explorer 7.0 will be made available only to users of Windows XP SP2 and the upcoming Longhorn release of Windows isn't sitting well with some IT managers.
Although corporate users contacted last week said they're happy about the security-focused improvements that Microsoft plans to make to its Web browser, several added that they think IE7 should also be supported on Windows 2000.
"Windows 2000 was built for the Internet and bought with good-faith expectations on security," said Charlie Ward, manager of IT architecture at Duke Power Co. in Charlotte, N.C. "If IE7 works only on Windows XP SP2 and above, Microsoft is forcing customers with no other compelling reason to upgrade to spend additional money to protect themselves from flaws in Microsoft's products."
Microsoft last week declined to comment about IE7. A company spokesman said more details will be made available when the first beta is released.
Gates said during a keynote address at the RSA Conference 2005 in San Francisco two weeks ago that Microsoft expects to deliver a beta version by "early in the summer." He vowed that IE7 will add "a new level of security," including stronger defenses against phishing attacks, malicious software and spyware. But the earliest edition of Windows that will be supported is XP SP2, Gates said.
Martin Colburn, chief technology officer at the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc., said the industry standard is typically to make improvements backward-compatible for the previous one or two releases. He added that it would make sense for Microsoft to do the same, since the company has had "notoriously weak security" in its products.
"If [users] want a level of security that probably should have been there with the product all along, they've got to upgrade," Colburn said. "That's a little bit challenging for customers that have already set out their upgrade schedules."
Kindred Healthcare Inc. has about 11,000 desktops running Windows 2000. Because the Louisville, Ky.-based company plans to skip XP with the exception of tactical situations, it will have to wait for Longhorn to get IE7, said Rob Rhodes, a technical consultant at Kindred.
The desktop version of Longhorn is expected to be released next year. Microsoft originally planned to deliver IE7 and Longhorn at the same time.
But Craig Roth, an analyst at Meta Group Inc., said Microsoft wants to show that it's "not standing still" as the open-source Firefox browser continues to gain users. The new IE7 plan "has a bit of a