CompuServe Messages

Steve; First of all, the version of NT I saw was pretty quick; faster, at any rate, than what everyone had been saying about it. However, it was slower than normal Windows, which is slow enough. Again, when I sat down at it, it was running about 15 applications, so there was some kind of load on it. The DEC PC had 24 megs of RAM. NT appears to be quite stable, and that was the buzz going around the show. If its so stable, why not release it now? Probably, to optimize the beast, and get the speed up. You say that NT is not likely to get anywhere except as a limited niche server for Windows 3.1 (for the next 5 years); I disagree. It will get somewhere when there are dirt cheap Pentium computers. This is likely to happen before 5 years are up. NT *does* not appear to be faster on non-Intel platforms; it is faster, period. Much faster. It is running on MIPS platforms, which are being produced by two or three companies (SGI is one, Olivetti is another). Additionally, it was running on Alpha at the show as well, so it now runs on three platforms. This alone is quite an accomplishment, actually. Lastly, we should see a SUN version with the initial release; you can bet that there will be a PowerPC/RS6000 version, too. I think that there were messages like yours circulating when Windows 3.0 was released. It, too, was very slow (especially on the hardware of the time); it also took a fair amount of RAM (yup, four megs on a PC was pretty outrageous even then; 8 was insane. Witness the failure of OS/2 as a result). Many folks said that there was no future for *any* GUI on the PC at the time; now, Windows applications have finally outsold DOS applications. Sooo…I opine that the NT has a rosy future, and will take off quickly after release. There will Pentiums to run it, in circulation, and hopefully (not for NT, but generally) RAM prices will be lower. The Microsoft hype engine will be in full speed mode. Just you wait; this is <continued>