Q & A on Project Status of Windows NT 5.0
June 30, 1998
The Microsoft® Windows NT® 5.0 operating system will help organizations reduce costs, provide the most powerful applications platform available and enable the next generation of business solutions. Microsoft Corp. is excited about the progress being made on this version and wanted to provide more information to its customers about specifics. Below are some answers to the most frequently asked questions about Windows NT 5.0.
Microsoft, Windows NT, IntelliMirror and Active Directory are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Q:When will the next major beta test release be distributed to customers?
A:Microsoft expects beta 2 of Windows NT Workstation 5.0, Windows NT Server 5.0 and Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition 5.0 to be released to testers later this summer.
Q:Is beta 2 being delivered later than you expected?
A:Yes. In order to get the complete feature set and level of quality that our customers expect, we have decided to move the beta 2 goal from second quarter to summer. Last fall we announced our goal to ship beta 2 by the end of June. In early May, based on the feedback that we had received from customers who worked with the interim builds distributed since beta 1, we realized that we would not be able to achieve this goal and announced that beta 2 would ship later this summer.
Q:Will beta 2 be feature-complete?
A:Generally yes. The key features for Windows NT 5.0 — including IntelliMirror
™
management technologies, Active Directory
™
directory service and Plug and Play support — will be included with beta 2. It is important to remember that this release is still a beta release so there will be bugs, and we will refine the product based on customer feedback.
Q:Why have you added a third beta release to the development schedule?
A:To broaden our testing. A key part of our development process has been to make interim builds available to customers who give us frequent feedback on the status of the product. We have been doing this since beta 1 and will continue to do this after beta 2. We had always planned to make one of these interim builds available to a broad set of customers as a
“beta 2 refresh”
. We have recently decided to name this refresh release beta 3 and make it available to an even wider set of customers.
Q:What does this mean for the release schedule of Windows NT 5.0?
A:While it is clear that the change in the target date for beta 2 from second quarter to summer had a direct impact on the final ship date of Windows NT 5.0, the change in the name of the
“beta 2 refresh”
to beta 3 does not affect the overall schedule for Windows NT 5.0, since we had always planned to make this interim build available to customers.
