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by Dominique Deckmyn

(IDG) -- Gearing up for its Thursday rollout event for Windows 2000 in San Francisco, Microsoft on Monday lined up several beta users to testify to the operating system's total cost of ownership benefits.

In a conference call, Deborah Willingham, vice president of Windows marketing at Microsoft, said early customers have experienced TCO reductions of 5 to 30 percent after they migrated to Windows 2000 from other platforms.

Roger Goad, chief information officer at WFofR, a 40-employee media buying and planning company in Richmond, Virginia, said his company expects a 280 percent return on investment within three years of migrating to Windows 2000.

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For example, Windows 2000 features for laptops, such as offline folders, will make the company's staff more productive and will allow the company more time and resources to explore new business opportunities, said Goad. The company rolled out Windows 2000 Professional and Server last month.

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Steve Adamo, manager of business systems development at Matsushita Electric of America, said his company expects an unspecified rise in the productivity of its sales force, while computer downtime should fall by 44 percent after Matsushita migrates from Windows 95 to Windows 2000, according to a study that was conducted for the company.

Microsoft also released TCO numbers from other customers, which were performed by third parties and validated by research firms Gartner Group and Giga Information Group. According to Microsoft, U.K.-based retail chain Marks & Spencer PLC will see a 10 percent reduction in inventory-related operating costs and a 4 percent increase in sales once it shifts to Windows 2000. Meanwhile, PC maker Micron Electronics will potentially lower the TCO of its computing environment 26 percent by upgrading from NT Server 4.0 to Windows 2000.