News
Most Popular Stories of 2004
- By Scott Bekker
- January 05, 2005
It's always interesting to look back and see which stories attracted the most attention from you over the last year in terms of clicks.
Some pretty clear trends in 2004, OK, one pretty clear trend -- interest in Windows security issues was huge in 2004.
The most viewed story of the year on ENTmag.com was the July 5 story dealing with Microsoft's release of an out-of-cycle fix for the critical flaw in IE. That's the one that security firm Secunia alerted us all to, in a story reported June 10 that itself was ranked 17th.
By far the biggest subcategory of popular security stories in 2004 was Windows XP Service Pack 2, a major security-focused overhaul of the operating system that Microsoft rolled out in chaotic fashion throughout August. Windows XP SP2-related stories held the second, third, fourth, 10th, 11th and 13th spots on the ENT list.
Other security stories that caught your attention in 2004 were Microsoft's April batch of patches, which fixed 20 flaws including 14 in one bulletin, and Microsoft's decision to give early security bulletin notifications to everyone. Microsoft's progress on a new version of Software Update Services called Windows Update Services for applying security and other patches throughout the year was also big.
There was other news than security in 2004. The seventh most popular article dealt with Microsoft's decision not to include Windows NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 in the new 10-year support policy. Later, Microsoft decided to extend custom support on those two products to two years, effectively supporting each for 10 years anyway. Microsoft's reversals on the features to include in the next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn" also held your interest.
- Interim Fix Released for Critical IE Flaw (7/5/2004)
- Windows XP SP2's Trail of Broken Apps (8/19/2004)
- Windows XP SP2 Coming in August (7/12/2004)
- Microsoft Clarifies XP SP2 Rollout Schedule (8/11/2004)
- Microsoft Releases Patches for a Raft of Critical Vulnerabilities (4/13/2004)
- Windows Update Services Hits Beta Stage (11/16/2004)
- Windows NT, Exchange 5.5 Support Not Extended Under New Policy (6/2/2004)
- Microsoft Throws Doors Open on Early Security Bulletin Notifications (11/4/2004)
- Microsoft: Longhorn Coming in 2006 (8/27/2004)
- Network Version of XP SP2 Available for Download (8/10/2004)
- Gates Shows Off Windows XP Service Pack 2 (2/24/2004)
- Allchin on Longhorn: We've Had to Make Some Hard Trade-offs (8/31/2004)
- Windows XP SP2 RC1 Adds Features (3/25/2004)
- SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 Gets Close (5/27/2004)
- HPC Edition of Windows Server 2003 on Tap for 2005 (6/23/2004)
- Software Update Services Overhauled (3/17/2004)
- 'Extremely Critical' IE Exploit in the Wild (6/10/2004)
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.