It has been 10 years

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10 years now since Windows 2000 came out, and I still run into SysAdmins who refer to an AD Domain Controller as a "PDC". Or worse, seem to think additional DCs past the first are "BDCs." As in, "I added a new BDC," when talking about a Server 2008 AD network.

I realize that "The PDC" is a kind of short-hand for "fully featured domain controller in a Windows Domain," but it is a reference that increasingly few of us will get. 10 years is an age in the IT industry. We have a whole new generation of Microsoft SysAdmins out there who've never clamped eyes on Windows NT, and therefore have to be reminded of the difference between P and B on your DCs since it doesn't matter on AD. Or worse, get trained by the old-guard and call AD domain-controllers PDCs since that's what everyone in the office does.

I also still see "WinNT" as short-hand for "Windows Server OS" in everything from internal documentation (I'm changing that where I find it and can fix it), to job postings ("10+ years WinNT experience"), to resumes, to job-descriptions. Happily, it has disappeared from marketing glossies. Job-descriptions I can kind of understand since those can be anywhere from three to fifteen years out of date. But job postings and resumes baffle me. Do they really mean WinNT the product, or WinNT the short-cut for "Windows Server"? I feel pity for the job applicant who has been subjected to supporting a desperately out of date operating system for the last eight years, and scorn for a business still using it.

As with all Microsoft operating-systems, there are some special cases that demand using it. We have scientific equipment on campus that costs Quite A Lot Of Money and therefore only get replaced every 10-20 years, but still have to attach to a computer. This is why we still have some Windows 3.11 in back corners, since drivers/protocols/whatnot for the very expensive gadget only exist on that platform. The same can be said for WinNT. So these edge cases exist.

However, for business? Yeah, it can take a decade to rewrite a bank's financial platform. That's where the pity comes in.

It has been 10 years since Windows NT was superseded by Windows 2000 and Active Directory. It's time to put the last nail in that coffin and bury it already.

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Don't be too frustrated with SysAdmins using WinNT. After all, I'm typing this on a Windows 7 box which is actually Microsoft Windows version 6.1.7600. Some would think that this OS came after Windows 3.1 but before Windows 95. But you would be wrong. Windows 7 came from Windows NT 3.1. (NT v4.0, NT v5 (Win 2000), NT v5.5 (WinXP), NT v6.0 (Vista)

In other words, blame Microsoft for using and changing a naming method in non-logical ways.