The future of Windows versions has been clarified by Microsoft during the past three weeks. At least until there are further changes. The mantra of a year ago was that Windows 98 would be the last version based on the Windows 95 code base and that "Consumer Windows" and Windows NT would use a common code base based on NT 5. The renaming of NT as Windows 2000 seemed to put that merger in cement.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the millennium. There will be another major update of the Windows 95 code base but to confuse us even more, it is one of three kinds of updates of Windows 98 expected in the coming 2 years:
- Windows 98 Service Pack 1 is expected in what is called a June time frame.
- What was scheduled to be Windows 98 OSR2 will be available in the retail channels as Windows 98 SE (SE="Second Edition") and will be "broadly available by the fall."
- "The next version of Consumer Windows" is due out in 2000, which given the usual Microsoft speak should be some time in 2001. It will be an upgrade of Windows 98 rather than a new code base.
According to the Microsoft Web site, the main new features of Win 98 SE will be Internet Explorer 5.0 (remarkably, the Service Pack will ship in two months with Internet Explorer 4.01 SP2), a proxy server like program called Internet Connection Sharing and what Microsoft calls "advanced hardware support."
The next version of Consumer Windows was announced as part of Steve Ballmer's keynote at WinHEC. So far there hasn't been much about what will be in this new version except for references to Home Networking and to UPnP - Universal Plug 'n Play, a topic for another time.
As for pricing, Win 98 SP1 will be free for the download - presumably from the Windows Update site. Win 98 SE will replace plain Win 98 on the store shelves with an expected retail price of $89. There has been talk it will be available as some kind of upgrade to Windows 98 users for something in the $20 range. I would guess that the next version of Consumer Windows will be in the same range as Windows 98 was originally - about $90 for upgraders and $200 for new users.
On top of this, there is all the NT activity. Windows 2000 will ship in the next year (I continue to predict February, 2000 in spite of much of the press buying the Microsoft winks and nods about this October) in a myriad of versions - both Workstation and Server (actually several Server versions) - and both 32-bit and 64-bit. Yes, in time for Intel's 64-bit Merced chip, there will be an appropriate Windows 2000. There's even going to be an embedded version of NT to allow small self contained servers.
I've several comments on all this. First, it shows the folly of renaming Windows NT as Windows 2000. What the heck is the next consumer version going to be called? Windows 2000, Consumer version? Windows 98, Third Edition?
Secondly, I can't help feeling some of this profusion of versions is driven by Microsoft worrying about Microsoft's cash flow rather than real technological needs.
A follow-up on last issue's column. Some readers interpreted my comments about Tim Byers-Lee not belonging on the list of Time magazine's 20 greatest scientists and thinkers of the 20th century to mean that I didn't get the importance of the web. But I do -
"A century or so from now, observers looking back on the 1990s will consider the advent of the Internet and the World-Wide Web one of the great watersheds of history -- comparable technologically to the invention of movable type, artistically to the Renaissance, and socially to the Declaration of Independence... Tens of thousands of creative network citizens across the world are setting up their own information servers and joining the Web. In the process, those net citizens are completely bypassing the Establishment with its bureaucracies, class hierarchies, and power structures, not to mention the entire monolithic apparatus of the traditional publishing industry!" --Ray Duncan, PC Magazine, May 16, 1995
I often use Ray's quote that shows he got it four years ago when many people didn't know what the Web was! But that doesn't make the invention either science or great thought.
Copyright 1999 Pinecliffe International, Barry Simon and Peter Deegan. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without their express written permission is prohibited.
