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- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!hermes.chpc.utexas.edu!apas611
- From: apas611@chpc.utexas.edu (David Boles)
- Subject: Impressions of Windows NT
- Message-ID: <1992Jul28.152304.28642@chpc.utexas.edu>
- Organization: The University of Texas System - CHPC
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 15:23:04 GMT
- Lines: 46
-
- Yesterday I attended a presentation on Windows NT given by someone
- who had just returned from the WinNT dev. conference. I went because
- I was genuinely curious about NT, and wanted to see what all the
- hoopla was about. The auditorium contained an audience of mainly
- engineers, programmers, and physicists used to using DOS, DOS/Windows,
- MacOS, UNIX (SunOS, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, Concentrix, UniCOS, NeXTstep, etc.)
- and recently OS/2 2.0.
-
- The presentation told us about the structure of NT and how user processes
- relate to it. If you look at it in light of NT having started life as
- OS/2 3.0, things make a lot of sense. There is a, IMHO, cleaner overall
- system architecture. However, after describing a system that is capable
- of being an upgrade of OS/2 2.0 we were told that Msoft intends to market
- this system for high-end x86 PC's (486-33 and up), RISC workstations, and
- uni- and multi-processor servers. We were then told that the system is
- _not_ (yes that is a negative) multi-user. The response from the audience
- was rolling laughter and jeers.
-
- So what we are going to be offered sometime in 1993, is an OS that is
- partly targeted at things like a Silicon Graphics 4-8 R4000 processor
- compute/file server that will only allow one person on at a time.
- Further, since NT is 32-bit, users won't be able to address all of their
- memory (physical + disk swap, the R4000 is a 64 bit chip because 32-bits
- isn't enough address space). With existing software, this machine can act
- as a file and compute server for 30-40 people. There is zero chance for
- any market penetration here.
-
- The person doing the presentation told the audience that they could come
- up and play with the system (the "pre-beta" from the conference) after
- the talk was over. When the presentation ended everyone but myself and
- one other got up and left. I went down just to look things over. The
- is currently in a state designed to give the appearance of maximum breadth
- of coverage. Start clicking, however, and you quickly realize that things
- are _very_ shallow (i.e., fancy looking and sounding icons have nothing
- but simple text display windows that pop up when activated, the help system
- wasn't working in the examples I tried, etc.).
-
- It was the most underwhelming first meeting I have ever had with a piece
- of product.
-
- Just a report,
-
- David Boles
- Applied Research Laboratories
- The University of Texas at Austin
-
-