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PCLT9 Oct 1996
Nobody has to act as the advocate for Windows 95. It will receive most of the publicity. It will be the system installed on all new computers in 1996. Clearly Windows 95 is much better than DOS 6 and Windows 3.1, so users will have an incentive to convert. The burden of proof is on anyone who might suggest another system.
Windows 95 is like a luxury mobile home. It is spacious and comfortable. It has a real kitchen. Someone could live in it for years and think it was a regular home. It costs less than a standard home and generally fits on a smaller lot. A structural engineer will note that it has no real foundation, and the construction may not be as durable as a traditional house. Even the best mobile home is no place to be in a tornado or hurricane.
Windows 95 lacks a clear separation between an authorized system kernel and the application programs. What passes for a kernel (the Virtual Machine Manager and the VxD's) do not really provide the full set of services that we might expect of an operating system. Application programs are not cleanly separated from each other or from the system.
Windows 95 has "preemptive multitasking". In plainer English, a program can do several things at once. For example, a Web Browser can be reading data off the network while it is formatting the text or graphics that was previously received. At the same time, another program can be formatting a floppy disk in the background. In Windows 3.1, the user could run Word and PowerPoint at the same time, but internally these "separate application programs" operated as subroutines of the Windows system. In Windows 95, programs run as threads that share a common virtual machine, common control blocks, and shared privileges. It is necessary to move to NT before programs run as separate processes with distinct files and privileges.
However, the requirement that Windows 95 support all the old DOS programs and even the old DOS device drivers forces compromises in integrity and security. Windows 95 remains somewhat more vulnerable to virus attack, and programming errors can crash it.
OS/2 and Windows NT run each application in its own isolated address space. Either system is more reliable than Windows 95. If OS/2 was still a viable system, it might have to be considered on technical merits. However, NT is the only real alternative.
When Microsoft ships NT 4.0 later this summer, Windows 95 and Windows NT will be almost identical at first view. Both will run the modern set of 32-bit WIN32 programs, including Office 95, Netscape, and VB4. NT will also be able to act run most server programs, including Web servers like Netscape FastTrack and databases like Oracle 7.
What does NT cost? An additional 4-8 megabytes of RAM. What do you lose? There is no Advanced Power Management in NT, so it is a poor choice for a laptop computer. Most no-name sound cards won't run on NT either.
If you have a desktop system with adequate memory, a LAN connection, and mainstream SCSI or EIDE/ATA disks, then NT is a reasonable choice.
The NT advocate will retell the story of the Three Little Pigs. Windows 95 built its house of straw. OS/2 built its house of twigs. Windows NT is built of bricks. NT is clearly the right choice if you are expecting the BBW.
The OS/2 advocate will ask you to consider Goldilocks. One bowl was too hot. One bowl was too cold. The one in the middle was just right. The extra features that make NT an interesting system have no place on the average desktop. An executive does not need a RISC multiprocessor, and a secretary does not want to become a system administrator in order to install a word processing package. If Windows 95 is too flimsy and NT is too big, OS/2 is a good intermediate choice. This was a good argument as long as OS/2 remained alive. Now that IBM has all but killed it off, OS/2 is no longer a viable choice.
Up to this point, Surviving the Next OS has made the same mistake everyone else makes by examining each operating system one at a time. Even small companies install a cluster of PC's in a Workgroup. An Information System consists of many machines, and there is no pressing need for them to all run one operating system.
Windows NT was a much more complicated development project than Windows 95, yet Microsoft released NT two years earlier. Windows 95 doesn't make sense as a Client operating system unless it has NT as a Server.
Because it can rely on Windows NT, Windows 95 doesn't have to worry about security, integrity, and recovery. It doesn't need database services. It does not need to act as a gateway. Microsoft can offer a full-function information system without burdening Windows 95 development with unnecessary requirements and without burdening desktop machines with higher memory cost.
Because Windows 95 exists, NT does not have to worry about making tons of money. Microsoft will make its money selling Windows 95 and desktop applications software. However, these desktop systems will be able to run advanced applications and high-end function because they will receive services through the network from an NT Server.
In its first year, Windows NT could offer a reasonable file and print server, database (SQL Server), and a communications gateway (for mainframe SNA and for remote dial-in users). With the Windows NT 3.5 release, Microsoft upgraded remote dial-in to support access to the Internet (TCP/IP), Microsoft Servers (NETBEUI), and Novell Server (IPX). The SMS product then provides a tool to inventory hardware and software and upgrade program products. A new mail system will support large scale message exchange.
Every large company is struggling with the system management and communications problems that Microsoft proposes to solve with the Windows 95 - Windows NT 3.51 system. As users upgrade to Windows 95, or as it comes preinstalled on machines, the existence of an already prepared Client will drive the demand for some NT 3.51 servers. If NT 3.51 comes in first for more specialized services (SMS) it may then drive the customer to reconsider earlier choices for other servers.
Windows 95 & NT provides Microsoft with the kind of technology shift that it needs to overthrow Netware. All of a sudden, the "server" is expected to do a lot more than just share files and printers. NT 3.51 can provide all the new management functions. It can also, incidentally, provide the traditional services that Netware used to supply. Because Microsoft can synchronize the client and server platforms, it can use this leverage to loosen and eventually displace Novell.
In Windows NT, every process runs with an Access Token that determines its ability to open files or use restricted system resources. If the program runs in the background as a Service, then the Access Token defaults to the dummy user "SYSTEM" though it can be configured to match any defined Userid when the Service is installed. If the process runs in the foreground, then it inherits the Access Token acquired by the user when he or she logged on. Network servers can receive access credentials with a request and can therefore perform an operation with an authority borrowed from the remote network client.
An NT workstation operating within a Workgroup keeps its own local database of users or groups. When the workstation joins a Domain, it authorizes requests using a database managed by the Domain Controllers. NT supplies its own set of administrative tools that simplify the definition and management of users and groups.
However, the NT system cannot be simply configured to rely upon a non-NT security mechanism. NT requires third party software to act as a Kerberos security server or to participate in a Cell of heterogeneous machines under the control of the Open Systems Foundation Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). If an Enterprise can satisfy all of its computing requirements using only NT servers, then it can maintain a single, simple security mechanism. Otherwise, there is no Microsoft solution that provides interoperability with Open System standards.
Ultimately, the choice of system depends on a vision of the entire information system. Microsoft proposes a tightly integrated, homogeneous network of Windows 95- NT 3.51 machines, with the occasional external connection to the Internet or through SNA Server to legacy mainframes. If this is enough to meet your needs, then it is clearly the simplest and least expensive choice.
IBM suggests that the enterprise already has a mainframe, AS/400, or Unix machine to function as the "large server." It therefore needs OS/2 as a more powerful client that is able to operate in the heterogeneous, multi-vendor, multi-system network.
Essentially there were two vendor-proposed futures:
MS: End users will no longer write programs. Users will buy shrink-wrapped applications to perform queries, generate reports, and build forms and other GUI dialogs. The applications will communicate using OLE2. Companies may be reduced to only writing stored procedures in SQL and Excel macros in Visual Basic for Applications. Eventually, corporations will be no more likely to have their own accounting system than to write their own word processor. Microsoft is positioned to deliver tools to Independent Software Vendors that write the applications that customers will purchase.
IBM: Corporate customers will continue to write programs, but at a very high level. They will buy shrink- wrapped components that can be added to the Workplace. "Programming" will then tie these components together using scripts. Initiatives and products that further this view include VisualAge, Talligent, Kaleida (multimedia scripting and objects, joint with Apple), OpenDoc (compound document objects, joint with Apple and Word Perfect), DCE (Open Systems Foundation), and CORBA (multivendor object standard).
IBM has already made the right answer clear. Last year, it terminated the Kaleida project without producing a meaningful multimedia delivery system. Then Talligent was killed without delivering the Object Oriented framework. The PowerPC version of OS/2 died. OpenDoc and SOM remain the last remaining pieces of the old strategy. A new strategy is being developed around Java.
IBM has a long history of developing, testing, distributing, and abandoning better technology than the other companies. This comes from a curiously bipolar internal structure. Products are developed in the lab where programmers and designers are aware of new technology and emerging standards. The lab will not produce an inferior product. However, IBM's marketing arm has a long established prohibition about discussing technology. The idea appears to be that big, complicated words will scare away the customers. So IBM may have a better idea, but nobody knows what or why. When sales do not reach expectations, IBM management will pull the plug on further development rather than accepting that the problem is in the corporation and the products have not been given a fair chance.
Copyright 1995 PCLT -- Surviving the Next Operating System -- H. Gilbert