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Windows Erases NT, Scratches in 2000

Microsoft Corp. today announced that the next major release of the Windows NT operating system line of products will be named Windows 2000.

With this announcement, Windows NT Workstation 5.0 becomes Windows 2000 Professional and Windows NT Server 5.0 becomes Windows 2000 Server, while Windows NT Server 5.0 Enterprise Edition will be named Windows 2000 Advanced Server. The company also said it will use the tag line "Built on Windows NT technology" with Windows 2000 products to let customers know which products are based on the NT [which stands for New Technology] architecture.

Microsoft is also expanding its line of server products with a new Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, the highest end Microsoft server operating system that will support up to 16-way SMP and 64 GB of physical memory, depending on system architecture.

"Windows NT will be the basis for all Microsoft PC operating systems from consumer products to the highest-performance servers," says Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the personal and business systems group at Microsoft. "Windows NT is going mainstream."

The name changes are effective immediately. Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 products will retain their current names. --Brian Ploskina, Assistant Editor

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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