Analysts at the GigaWorld IT Forum '98 in Scottsdale Arizona on Monday
advised attendees to skip Windows NT 5.0 in favor of a later release. Rob
Enderle of the Giga Information Group says that NT 5.0 is likely to be
buggy because 85% of its 30 million lines of code are new.
"It's too complex and too new," he said. "Even inside Microsoft, there's a
realization that the product won't ramp to volume until NT 6.0 because of
the fear of initial releases."
Enderle, who predicted that the computer market would be a different place
by the time NT 6.0 ships, suggested that anyone wishing to get on the NT
5.0 bandwagon at least wait until "Service Pack 3, or NT 5.5," which he
said would follow NT 5.0's release by about a year. Enderle says that two
separate teams at Microsoft--Windows CE and "Windows NT Lite"--are working
on OSes for Internet-ready devices that are "closer to the VCR than a
traditional PC.
"You'll still be buying from Microsoft, but it will be different stuff," he
said.
What's amazing, of course, is that people pay money to listen to these
people