Ray Van Eng (09/19/97)                      

Microsoft Corporation says it will release Windows NT 5.0, a 32 bit operating system which will provide an easy migration path for the 16 bit Windows 3.x users. No shipping date is announced, but it is widely expected to be available in the second half of 1998.

However, nagging problems remain for such an upgrade, according to industry experts. One is application compatibility. Even Microsoft admits that not all older 16 bit applications for Windows 3.x would run on the new NT 5.0.

The other is system resources. NT 5.0 would likely require 24 or 32 MB of RAM to operate and may occupy close to 100 MB of hard disk space. This does not sit well with older computers running Windows 3.x with just 4 or 8 MB of random access memory with not much hard disk capacity to spare.

It remains to be seen whether corporations would buy into the idea of upgrading their PC hardware in order to accommodate the resource hungry Windows NT 5.0.

As for application compatibility problem, some may suggest that a low cost network computer such as Sun Microsystems' JavaStation or Microsoft's newly announced Windows-based Terminal (WBT) may be the solution.

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