August 11, 1999

More Windows Than Fleas On A Dog

Threads

Are the many versions of Windows a sign of vigor or a sign that Microsoft has lost focus? Will Microsoft be able to pull it all back to a common code base and, if so, will that help Windows become more stable and reliable, or will Microsoft reduce its product differentiation? If you're running Win9x, does "Millennium" interest you, or have you either decided to stay with what you have or jump to Windows 2000 or Neptune? If you're into bigger iron, do you think Janus will cut it, or is Microsoft out of its league? Discuss it in LangaLetter threads.

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Fred Langa is a senior consulting editor and columnist for Windows Magazine. Fred's free weekly newsletter is available via subscribe@langa.com. You can contact him at fred@langa.com or via his website at http://www.langa.com.

By Fred Langa

It started as an idle thought: I wanted to count the current and near-term versions of Windows. I started to lose track at about three dozen! I'd bet I didn't get them all, but here's what I came up with:

A nontrivial number of businesses still runs Windows 3.x, which includes 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, and Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and 3.11.

A very large number runs Windows 95, including the original, plus the OSR1-, OSR2- or OSR2.5-modified a, b, or c versions in retail or OEM form.

A large and growing number runs Win98, or Win98 SP1, or Win98 "System Update" or Win98 Second Edition. There are retail and OEM versions here, too.

NT3 and 3.51 are still out there, as are the--what, four?--Service Pack versions of NT4 for the workstation, server, and terminal server editions. ... And yes, there are retail and OEM flavors.

NT5, er, Windows 2000 is in beta, and should be out in a few months. (There are Professional, Server, and Advanced Server versions; no doubt there will be both retail and OEM versions, too.)

Oops--can't forget Windows CE 1.0, 2.0, 2.11, 2.2, and (soon) 3.0...

Next year, around midyear, Microsoft will probably release "Millennium," which may be the last code-refresh of the Win9x series, followed by the first beta of the follow-on to Win9x: "Consumer NT," which is code-named Neptune. My guess is that Millennium is Microsoft's tacit admission that (1) there's a lot of viable legacy hardware and software out there that NT/Windows 2000 can't run, but businesses and users just aren't ready to dump; and (2) despite its advances, Windows 2000 Plug-and-Play support is still not up to where Win9x's is. Hence, there's another refresh of Win9x to act as a bridge until Consumer NT/Neptune is fully ready. (Want more information? See stories here, here and here )

On the Windows 2000 side, we'll almost surely see the first Service Packs arrive next year, along with Janus, the Data Center version of Windows that some are dubbing "the Unix Killer."

Given how long Unix has been around and all the travail--both self-inflicted and in the form of direct assaults by competitors--that Unix has survived, I doubt Unix is in any danger of imminent death. But still, Janus looks interesting: It will support up to 16 processors out of the box, with advanced load-balancing and 8:1 failover support (any one of eight CPUs can start an NT process in the event that one fails). From the get-go, it's aimed at enterprise accounts that need to support high-end transactional apps. (For more information, see story )

Janus won't kill Unix, but if it succeeds, it could be an obstacle to the continued growth of one species of Unix--Linux--in the enterprise space: I have a hard time imagining a large corporation running its "bet-the-business" transaction applications on an operating system that's supported primarily by Usenet newsgroups and ad hoc chat rooms. On the other hand, if Janus can combine Unix's power with NT's relative friendliness, and back it up with a 24-by-7 enterprise-class support operation, I can easily imagine large accounts wanting to take a look.

But what's your take on all this? Are the many versions of Windows a sign of vigor or a sign that Microsoft has lost focus? Will Microsoft be able to pull it all back to a common code base and, if so, will that help Windows become more stable and reliable, or will Microsoft reduce its product differentiation?

If you're running Win9x, does "Millennium" interest you, or have you either decided to stay with what you have or jump to Windows 2000 or Neptune? If you're into bigger iron, do you think Janus will cut it, or is Microsoft out of its league?

And what other versions of Windows did I miss? Join in the discussion! Join in!

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