Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 Technical Reviewer's Workshop Reviewed
Keith Furman and I descended on Sea-Tac, the airport serving the Seattle-Tacoma area, about two hours
later than expected on Monday night. Late Monday night. Our plane
had been delayed due to a storm in Phoenix, and such an event is so rare
I was sure that the gods were conspiring against me. We dropped dead in
our hotel room in Bellevue at 2:00 a.m., setting the alarm clock for 6:00
a.m. so we could make it into town for the conference.
Day One
Fifteen
minutes later (or so it seemed), our alarm clock went off and we
struggled into town. Being new to the area, we probably took the
absolutely worse possible way in, but we did pass an amusing "Apple
Maggot Quarantine Area" highway sign, given its proximity to the
Microsoft campus, however, and that alone was worth the trip. Seattle,
for those who have never been, is amazingly similar to San Francisco:
it's an old-looking city with plenty of trees (that is, it's nothing like
Phoenix) and it stretches out to the water that surrounds it. The
waterways of Seattle, however, are much more attractive than San
Francisco, as is the surrounding countryside, which features the
requisite towering pines and deep green grass. You have to forgive me for
waxing over this: Living in Phoenix tends to dull your senses to the
color green a bit.
 The
Windows NT 5.0 Technical Workshop was held at the Sheraton Towers in
downtown Seattle. It is what it sounds like, a rich resort with all the
amenities (that is, it's everything our hotel wasn't) including its own
travel center and the like. The conference was held on the second floor,
amusingly set next to a Rotary Club conference of sorts that featured
some interesting-looking buttons. Pressing on, we received our first
shock of the day, a massive (and I mean massive) binder full of
white papers and slide presentation print-outs. The paper in the binder
is about 6 inches tall (think about that for a second) and the thing has
to weigh about 30 pounds. We got our ID badges, binder, and a few stacks
of paper than Microsoft didn't have time to collate into the binder yet
and sat down on the floor to mull over this a bit. Around us, a crowd was
gathering, including a few familiar faces from Windows NT magazine and
other trade publications. We grabbed some drinks (as usual, Microsoft
provided a nice buffet breakfast each day drinks for the duration) and
headed into the conference room when the doors opened at 8:00.
The stage was done up in typical
Microsoft fashion with the same hardware the company uses at tradeshows.
Keith and I grabbed seats right up front but two massive display panels
brought images from computers on stage to the back of the room as well.
We spent the next few minutes going over the agenda and other details of
the conference. A couple of interesting notes: Microsoft, as usual,
provided a press room with computers and Internet access, and free phone
use. Not too shabby. They also offered to ship everyone's binders home
for free via Federal Express. Given the heft of this thing, I can't tell
you enough how much I appreciated this, and the cost of such a gift is
staggering: By my estimate, about 150 of the 181 attendees were from
outside the United States.
Agenda
Day
One -- Tuesday, August 18
8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. -- Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. -- Introduction and Product Overview
10:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. -- BREAK
10:15 a.m. to 12:15 a.m. -- Distributed Services
12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. -- LUNCH
1:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. -- Core Architecture (Base)
2:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. -- Networking, Communications, & Printing
4:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. -- BREAK
4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. -- Distributed Applications
5:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. -- Day-One General Q&A
6:00 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. -- Dinner Reception
Day Two -- Wednesday,
August 198:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. -- Continental Breakfast
8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. -- Setup
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. -- Management Infrastructure
11:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. -- BREAK
11:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. -- IntelliMirror
12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. -- LUNCH
1:45 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. -- Hardware Support & Multimedia
2:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. -- Mobile Enhancements
4:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. -- BREAK
4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. -- User Interface
5:45 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. -- Closing and Q&A
6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. -- Closing Reception
Introduction and Product Overview
Microsoft
Senior Vice President Jim Allchin opened the conference with a technical
and marketing overview of Windows NT 5.0. Allchin described the history
of Windows NT, including an interesting timeline that somehow manages to
squeeze a major release of NT into ever year since it was introduced. The
following list also includes the goals of each release:
1993 -- Windows NT 3.1 -- Micro-kernel
operating system
1994 -- Windows NT 3.5 -- Size and performance
1995 -- Windows NT 3.51 -- Interoperability and compatibility
1996 -- Windows NT 4.0 -- New user interface
1997 -- Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition -- Enterprise features (large
memory support, etc.)
1998 -- Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server -- Legacy desktops
Based on this, it's fair to say that
1999 will be no different. Allchin told the 181 in attendance (which
included representatives from 32 countries) that while Windows NT 5.0 was
the most important release in NT's history, it was also just another step
on the path to Bill Gates' vision of "information at your
fingertips." Future releases, he said, would finish that goal. While
I feel that
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