NT 5.0 Beta 2: Sooner, not later?
By Bob Trott
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 5:00 PM PT, Aug 14, 1998
At long last, Microsoft is ready to roll out Beta 2 of Windows NT 5.0 at a technical workshop next week in Seattle, if
weekend work on the latest release candidate goes as planned, according to sources close to the company.
"If what you see (at the Windows NT 5.0 Technical Workshop) isn't Beta 2, it'll be very close," one beta tester who
requested anonymity said.
One Microsoft official would only say that Beta 2 -- which is coming almost a year after the first test version of NT 5.0
-- will be released "this summer."
However, another beta tester said the current build is not ready for Beta 2 status, and that Microsoft could use the
extra time.
"Although it looks similar to NT 4.0, NT 5.0 is really a completely new OS that happens to have backward
compatibility with NT 4.0 and Win9x," this beta tester said. "Some of the things Microsoft has done, such as adding
Device Manager, are welcome changes. But other things, such as Network Connections, are really a step backwards.
And the big things Microsoft has promised -- Terminal Server services, IntelliMirror, etc. -- aren't working as
advertised."
Beta 2 is expected to add more of NT 5.0's Active Directory features, IntelliMirror technology providing roaming user
capabilities, and Windows Terminal Server, among other features. When completed, NT 5.0 will have almost twice as
many lines of code as NT 4.0.
The final ship date of NT 5.0 is cloudy, and Microsoft recently added a third beta phase, which will be public.
Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, Wash., is at microsoft.com.
Bob Trott is a senior editor for InfoWorld.
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