During the PDC, Microsoft preached the mantra of NT, with both Bill Gates and VP Jim Allchin explaining that they were "betting the company" on Windows NT.
Maybe not.
Monday at an IT conference, Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates said that the company was focusing the majority of its resources on natural speech recognition and related technologies.
"Now we're betting the company on these natural interface technologies," Gates said, apparently oblivious that the PDC was only two weeks ago. Gates said that natural language capabilities would be built into Windows within five years.
"The demos of this were great seven years ago but progress has been disappointing, \[until now\]," he said.
Gates also downplayed Windows 98, taking a stance that many journalists and testers have already adopted.
"Windows 98 is nothing dramatic," he said, noting that it was nothing more than a "tune-up" upgrade. Windows NT is the future, he said, noting that users should buy computers with 32 to 64 MB of RAM
