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. 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. 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. -- Registration and Continental Breakfast 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. -- Continental Breakfast 1993 -- Windows NT 3.1 -- Micro-kernel
operating system 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 this is a realistic view of the product, Allchin's comments
to the press that day stand in sharp contrast to comments made earlier by
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and president Steve Ballmer, who have described
this release as something they're betting the company on. No matter: In
the grand scheme of things, Allchin's comments ring truer, though they
are far less exciting, I suppose.
After the history lesson, Allchin and
Windows Product Manager Yusuf Mehdi, along with Windows NT Product
Manager Mike Nash, gave a general overview of Windows NT 5.0. If I came
away with one general theme for Windows NT 5.0, it would be this:
Windows NT 5.0 is aimed at the
corporate user, not the home/consumer user.
Please read that a few times to
yourself. While it's true that many people (myself included) use NT at
home, Windows NT 5.0 will not supplant Windows 98 as the home
operating system of choice. Microsoft does promise that the next major
version of Windows NT after 5.0 will include a consumer version, but 5.0
is not it. This is, of course, a way to cover their tracks: While NT 5.0
(particularly Workstation) will, in fact, be a better OS for many home
users, the company is focusing this release on corporate needs and
features. Most specifically, it will not be providing the same level of
compatibility with home/consumer apps that Windows 98 does. Given that list, here are the major
features of each edition of Windows NT 5.0 (not that each succeeding
edition is essentially a superset of the one before it): Moshie Dunie, a Microsoft Vice President,
also discussed the company's target date for shipping Windows NT 5.0. He
said that there were 5000 people working on the product within Microsoft and
its development partners. The NT team is composed on sub-teams (such as
"Networking," "Shell," and the like) that work with a
central build, test, and management team that is responsible for
"building" Windows NT 5.0 every day. Dunie says that there are far
more people testing NT 5.0 within Microsoft than there are actually
developing it. Dunie also provided the following list of Windows NT 5.0
milestones:
Windows NT 5.0 Beta is shipping to over
250,000 testers (45,000 technical beta testers, 25,000 channel partners,
200,000 MSDN members, and 181 conference attendees). Dunie said that our
CDs (which include Workstation and Server) were being burned as he
spoke: We ended up getting them late Wednesday.
Dunie suggested that Beta 3 could be
expected in late 1998 or early 1999 though no firm release date was
given, of course. Given the massive improvements between Beta 1 and Beta
2, however, I predict that Windows NT 5.0 will see the
light of day before the end of June 1999. However, I think it's best
to remember the words of Moshie Dunie, who summed up the release of NT
5.0 like so: "When customers tell us it's ready, [we will release
Windows NT 5.0,] not a day earlier."
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.
Agenda
Day
One -- Tuesday, August 18
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
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:
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
Goals for Windows NT 5.0
Allchin
iterated through a list of goals for Windows NT 5.0. These include:Â
Windows NT Workstation 5.0
Microsoft stressed that Windows NT Workstation 5.0 is for corporate
users, not consumers. Key features include:
After the Workstation overview, there
was a demonstration of NTWS' ability to work offline in a mobile user
scenario. These features, which I will get into in some detail later
in this review (or in a subsequent technology showcase) are killer.
Windows NT 5.0 Workstation blows Windows 98 away in this area.
Windows NT Server 5.0
Windows
NT Server 5.0 is billed as the "ultimate NOS." Key features
include:
I should note that at this point, Tanya
van Dam gave a killer demonstration of Exchange Server/Active Directory
automatic replication, which is bi-directional. Microsoft also has Novell
DS-->Active Directory (one-way currently) replication working. Very
nice.
Windows NT 5.0 Networks
Yusuf
Mehdi effectively demonstrated why the combination of Windows NT Workstation
5.0 on the client and Windows NT Server 5.0 on the server offered the best
possible combination of features with IntelliMirror.
This is a subject I will definitely be
writing about at length in the future.
Other editions and the
"Server" vs. Services issue
Curiously,
the Enterprise Edition was not discussed. If you're wondering, the Terminal
Server Edition has been removed as a separate product with NT 5.0 and is
available as an optional component of Windows NT Server 5.0, now known as Terminal
Services. In fact, many "servers" have been renamed in 5.0 to
more clearly label their position as a component of Server. For example,
Internet Information Server is now called Internet Information Services and
Transaction Server is now called Transaction Services (since renamed to
"Component Services" --Paul).
When will Windows NT 5.0
ship?
I
don't think the crowd was listening more closely to any part of the
conference than the couple of minutes Jim Allchin spent discussing the
release date of Windows NT 5.0. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to
this question: Rightfully so, Allchin says that Microsoft will ship Windows
NT 5.0 when its customers say its ready. Specifically, members of the Rapid
Deployment Program (RDP), a group of Fortune 100 business partners, is
working closely with Microsoft to ensure that the product is as good as it
can be. According to Microsoft, RDP members are responsible for finding the
most bugs in Windows NT 5.0 (beta testers only find 10%) and these early
adopters are given a huge say in the direction NT 5.0 will take. Another
criteria for shipping is that no so-called "Sev-1" bugs (that is,
"showstoppers") must exist in the code before Microsoft will ship
it. Microsoft will be running its 1000+ production servers and 20,000+
desktops on Windows NT 5.0 before they ship it to the public as well. This
process, which is known as "eating your own dog food," ensures that
Microsoft itself is in a position to be its own biggest customer. If it's
not good enough for Microsoft, they won't ship it.
After Windows NT 5.0...
Jim Allchin briefly discussed Microsoft's plans for post-Windows NT
5.0 releases, though he stopped shorting of specifically mentioning
Windows NT 5.1 (code-named "Asteroid") and Windows NT 6.0
(code-named "Neptune"). He did, however, say that future
releases of Windows NT would include the following:
In short, the mantra at Microsoft is "NT
Everywhere."
Keith
and Paul visit Redmond
After
the first break (which ran late like everything else those two days), Keith
and I left Seattle and headed across the river to Redmond to visit with some
friends at Microsoft. I don't want to describe this visit in too much detail
(well, in any detail, actually) because that's not what this trip was about.
We only had two days in Seattle and wanted to use our time as wisely as
possible. Basically, we skipped out on the rest of day one, but information
from the sessions we missed will be covered in future NT 5.0 Technology
Showcase articles, thanks to the mammoth binder we got. The short version of
our visit is that we got to see some people, check out the sprawling campus,
and just hang out. By the time night came, we were both pretty exhausted, so
we ended up crashing right after dinner. What can you expect after four
hours of sleep and a full day?
Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 Technical Reviewer's Workshop Reviewed
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