Datasheet

Minasi c01.tex V3 - 05/29/2008 9:45pm Page 13
ABRIEFHISTORYOFWINDOWS 13
Note
Here’s an interesting side note: Ten years after Compaq (now HP) decided that its sales force couldn’t
sell network software, it reversed direction and said it would sell a special version of Windows 2000
called Datacenter Server. It’s special because you cannot buy it from Microsoft — you must buy it
preinstalled on specially certified vendor hardware. In other words, the hardware vendors (HP is not
the only one selling Datacenter) now believe that they can sell complex network operating systems.
I wish them the best of luck, but stay tuned to see the outcome of this particular marketing
maneuver!
LAN Manager in its first incarnation still wasn’t half the product that Novell NetWare was,
but it was getting there. LAN Manager 2 greatly closed the gap, and in fact, on some benchmarks
LAN Manager outpaced Novell NetWare. Additionally, LAN Manager included administrative
and security features that brought it even closer to Novell NetWare in the minds of many network
managers. Slowly, LAN Manager gained about a 20 percent share of the network market.
When Microsoft designed LAN Manager, however, it designed it for the 286 chip (more accu-
rately, I should say again that LAN Manager was built atop OS/2 1.x, and OS/2 1.x was built for
the 286 chip). LAN Manager’s 286 foundation hampered its performance and sales. In contrast,
Novell designed their premier products (NetWare 3 and 4) to use the full capabilities of the 386
and later processors. Microsoft’s breakup with IBM delayed the release of a 386-based product,
and in a sense, Microsoft never released the 386-based product.
Instead of continuing to climb the ladder of Intel processor capabilities, Microsoft decided
to build a processor-independent operating system that would sit in roughly the same market
position as Unix. It could then be implemented for the 386 and later chips, and it also could run
well on other processors, such as the PowerPC, Alpha, and MIPS chips. Microsoft called this new
operating system NT, for ‘‘new technology.’’ Not only would NT serve as a workstation operating
system, but it would also arrive in a network server version to be called LAN Manager NT. No
products ever shipped with that name, but the wallpaper that NT Server displays when no one is
logged in is called LANMANNT.BMP to this day.
In August 1993, Microsoft released LAN Manager NT with the name NT Advanced Server. In
a shameless marketing move, it was labeled version 3.1 in order to match the version numbers
of the Windows desktop products. This first version of NT Advanced Server performed quite
well. However, it was memory-hungry, lacked Novell connectivity, and had only the most basic
TCP/IP connectivity.
September 1994 brought a new version and a new name: Microsoft Windows NT Server version
3.5. Version 3.5 was mainly a ‘‘polish’’ of 3.1; it was less memory-hungry, it included Novell
and TCP/IP connectivity right in the box, and it included Windows for Workgroups versions
of the administrative tools so network administrators could work from a Workgroup machine
rather than an NT machine. Where many vendors would spend 13 months adding silly bells and
whistles, NT 3.5 showed that the Microsoft folks had spent most of their time fine-tuning the
operating system, trimming its memory requirements, and speeding it up.
In October 1995 came NT version 3.51, which mainly brought support for PCMCIA cards (a
real boon for us traveling instructor types), file compression, and a raft of bug fixes.
NT version 4, 1996’s edition of NT, got a newer Windows 95–like face and a bunch of new
features, but no really radical networking changes. Under the hood, NT 4 wasn’t much different
from NT 3.51.