And Then There Was One
Intel shocked the computer world April 1 when it announced that it was dropping support for Windows NT. Following the trend of major chip manufacturers that are abandoning the NT platform, Intel has sent the Pentium and Pentium Pro CPUs the way of MIPS and PowerPC. Digital's Alpha is now the only processor that will run NT.
Intel felt that there was no longer any value proposition in the NT marketplace. The company just couldn't see distributed network computing as its future, and the home-PC industry hasn't been giving the company the investment return it expected. In addition, Intel just wasn't seeing the performance and scalability that its chips should have delivered, and announced that Microsoft was entirely to blame. Sources also recently revealed that Intel will drop Windows 95 support by April 1, 1998. The home computer/game market, Intel has reported, will be left to those with a vested interest, such as Nintendo.
Intel executives see much more market opportunity in the traffic-sign industry. They have refocused Intel 100 percent on automated street signs, and the company's embedded systems applications will allow it to build up to four- and eight-way Pentium Pro-powered stop lights. Zero-tolerance for traffic jams is Intel's motto--you'll never be late for work again!
—Fedora Wilson
Active Altair
As part of Microsoft's continuing efforts to be 100 percent backwards-compatible, it has ported Windows NT 4.0 Server to the Altair platform, as of April 1. This new 8-bit version of NT sports single-bit encryption, a full 64KB virtual memory space, support for 360KB floppies, and serial-port networking.
The new 4-LED interface lets users know whether the system is on or off, displays processor utilization (each retried instruction is mirrored by a flash), gives a logical on/off compute result, and has a last diode that is user-configurable. This expressive, flexible, and dynamic interface will move NT into the home computer market. Bill Gates said, "Ease of use is our primary goal here. We wanted to take home computing to its next logical step, and the Internet just wasn't hacking it."
The expected price for a 10-user license pack is staying at $995, firming up Microsoft's commitment to users to keep NT as much of a value-oriented OS as it is enterprise-aware.
—Fedora Wilson
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