Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 on tap, Microsoft says

Microsoft Corporation went public with some details about Windows NT 5.0this week when it delivered a live demo of Build 1868 of its latest OS to acrowd at the Usenix NT Symposium. The company also demonstrated its NTServices for UNIX add-on package, which will be available in separateversions for Windows NT 4.0 and 5.0.

Windows NT program manager Tom Phillips says the company is within "100showstoppers" of releasing Beta 2 of the oft-delayed OS, which is due soon.

"We are code complete across all areas, and are down to less than 100 totalshowstoppers. We hope to have Beta 2 out by the end of this month," hesaid.

According to a report on ZD Network News, Microsoft released Build 1859 toits private beta test, a release the report describes as a "ReleaseCandidate for Beta 2." Beta 2 is widely rumored to be due on August 18th,when a group of NT 5.0 partners will attend a reviewers workshop inRedmond.

Microsoft even played it cute when NT Storage architect Felipe Cabrerajoked about comments made in the press--including WinInfo--that the companywould ship NT on time by simply dropping features. Despite the humor, itis still widely believed that this is exactly what Microsoft is doing.

"We're [reducing the estimated 30 million of lines of code in NT 5.0] bycutting features," Cabrera joked