Windows NT 4.0 Server, still the weapon of choice for quantities of the more truculent IT manager, has been given another 12 months to live. Microsoft today intends to announce that paid incident and security hotfix support for the product, previously scheduled to cease at the end of this year, will now run up until 31st December 2004.

Although Microsoft would dearly have loved NT Server users to have started migrating shortly after (well, maybe about six months before, really) the introduction of Windows 2000 Server, many NT users have been hanging in splendidly. It's robust, they understand it, it does the job, so why switch?

Microsoft senior marketing manager Lars Ahlgren told The Register that the delay in sunsetting NT 4.0 Server was based on feedback from customers. It is still on the way out, as the company won't be extending support for non-security hotfixes, but the change still means that NT is not going to be culled for security reasons. Which is what Microsoft intimated might happen to some of its products last year. ®