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- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!darwin.sura.net!mips!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!hermes.chpc.utexas.edu!apas611
- From: apas611@chpc.utexas.edu (David Boles)
- Subject: Re: Impressions of Windows NT
- Message-ID: <1992Jul28.194721.951@chpc.utexas.edu>
- Organization: The University of Texas System - CHPC
- References: <9207281653.AA18391@enet-gw.pa.dec.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 19:47:21 GMT
- Lines: 61
-
- In article <9207281653.AA18391@enet-gw.pa.dec.com> reisert@mast.enet.dec.com (Jim -- MLO3-6/B9 -- DTN 223-5747) writes:
- >A co-worker (and user) thought he'd share his opinions on NT:
- >
- >Well, in a year's time 486 PC's will cost less than 386 PC's do today.
- >486 machines will effectively become the low to mid end of the market.
- >Basically, you will run MS-DOS/Windows on the smallest machines, and
- >NT on anything from an ancient 486 on up. I don't see what is wrong
- >with this strategy.
- >
- >>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.
- >
- >This statement is flatly wrong.
- >
-
- Gee, that's odd. That is what the books published by Microsoft and
- distributed at the conference say. Yes, given the preemptive, multi-
- tasking architecture of the system it could be made so without severe
- changes. As NT currently exists, only 1 (one) user can be logged on
- at a time. Citrix is, according to Msoft, working on a character-mode
- version of NT.
-
- >>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.
- >
- >Wrong.
- >
-
- See above.
-
- >>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).
- >
- >Wrong. The R4000 is a 32-bit chip. NT is 32 bits now, and has hooks
- >for 64-bit support.
-
- Wrong again. The R4000 is _emphatically_ a 64 bit chip. It was designed
- that way and has been shipping for _months_ in that form. I know, I've
- got one.
-
- >I am using NT 6--12 hours a day. It is very robust. Some of the tools don't
- >have all the icons hooked up. His point about the help system not being
- >hooked up in the SDK is correct. Some of the tools definitely don't have
- >everything turned on. However, it is a preliminary SDK release. It isn't
- >even the final SDK, which itself would be before the external full field
- >test. Hooking up tool icons is a very minor thing to fix.
-
- You are exactly right here. My only point is that their timetable of
- a September beta release is realistic, but that they will never get it
- ready for general release by December. I'd call them optimistic if they
- were claiming that they would release in June of 1993.
-
- Cheers,
-
- David Boles
- Applied Research Labs
- The University of Texas at Austin
-
-
-