Micro$oft has confirmed that its forthcoming website browser (Internet Explorer v7) update will be made available to a number of other modern MS operating systems. Sadly Windows 2000 support remains uncertain:

A blog posting by Dave Massy, a programme manager on the IE team, reveals: "We currently plan to make IE7 available for Windows XP SP2 and later. This will therefore include availability not only for the 32-bit version of Windows XP SP2 but also for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 SP1 both of which are due to be released soon."

However, the IE7 team are keeping quiet on the subject of Windows 2000. "We have heard the requests for support of Windows 2000 but have nothing to announce at this time," the posting continues.

Technically speaking the reasons for MS to avoid supporting Win2000 are far fewer than they make out, yet the marketing angle is firmly against it. We say; it's still possible Win2K will be given the green light, but don't bet the house.

In the meantime you could just upgrade to Firefox and forget Microsoft altogether. More @ ZDNet.