encyclo - 12:03 am on Jul 14, 2010 (gmt 0)

Win2K (...) continues to operate as a strong work horse.

Until the first vulnerability affecting it is found and left unpatched. I really do not follow your argument at all.

You are using an eleven year-old operating system in a mission-critical environment with zero vendor-support, keeping faith in an outdated, unsupported product based merely on past performance.

The vendor (MS) announced years ago the end-of-life plans for their product, and you have done nothing so far in terms of planning for the end of security hotfixes. There have been two major Windows server OS updates to which you have not migrated. Shouldn't you have started planning this a long time ago?

Seriously, this is like riding down the freeway with the brakes cut on your car - you'll be just fine... until a sudden event puts you in serious trouble. If you choose a proprietary system, then you need to play by that system's support cycle. I'm sorry, but running a live Windows 2000 server today is insane.