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Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

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Re: Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

#2
One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. In that, it was much better than the early dual PPC Macs running MacOS classic, which used one processor as a slave to offload computation from the main one.

NT also offered the same UI as Windows 3 (Windows 3 and 3.1 were OK, but Windows for Workgroups was the first really nice 16-bit Windows).

One issue with OS/2’s Windows compatibility is that Microsoft had to license Windows from Microsoft, so an OS/2 that could run Windows programs was more expensive than a “pure” one. Even though Windows NT is profoundly different from 16-bit Windows, it kept the same APIs, so. OS/2 exposed the differences to the apps running in user mode.

Re: Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

#4
post #2

One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. In that, it was much better than the early dual PPC Macs running MacOS classic, which used one processor as a slave to offload computation from the main one. NT also offered the same UI as Windows 3 (Windows 3 and 3.1 were OK, but Windows for Workgroups was the first really nice 16-bit Windows). One issue with OS/2’s Windows compat…

> One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor.

I learned this the hard way in 1998. I built up a dual PII system and installed Win98. sigh

Re: Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

#5
post #2

One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. In that, it was much better than the early dual PPC Macs running MacOS classic, which used one processor as a slave to offload computation from the main one. NT also offered the same UI as Windows 3 (Windows 3 and 3.1 were OK, but Windows for Workgroups was the first really nice 16-bit Windows). One issue with OS/2’s Windows compat…

Running the Netscape or Mozilla browsers would use up 100% cpu, so it was fantastic to have a dual-cpu system so that your system was still 100% responsive.

Re: Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

#6
post #2

One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. In that, it was much better than the early dual PPC Macs running MacOS classic, which used one processor as a slave to offload computation from the main one. NT also offered the same UI as Windows 3 (Windows 3 and 3.1 were OK, but Windows for Workgroups was the first really nice 16-bit Windows). One issue with OS/2’s Windows compat…

Running the Netscape or Mozilla browsers would use up 100% cpu, so it was fantastic to have a dual-cpu system so that your system was still 100% responsive.

In the Windows 2000 time, I got an IBM PC Server 320 with two Pentium 200-ish CPUs. The level of responsiveness was nothing I have ever seen back then, comparable to the single-CPU Suns and SGIs we had.

Re: Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

#7
post #2

One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. In that, it was much better than the early dual PPC Macs running MacOS classic, which used one processor as a slave to offload computation from the main one. NT also offered the same UI as Windows 3 (Windows 3 and 3.1 were OK, but Windows for Workgroups was the first really nice 16-bit Windows). One issue with OS/2’s Windows compat…

> One interesting and rare feature of NT was the ability to use more than one processor. I learned this the hard way in 1998. I built up a dual PII system and installed Win98. sigh

I hope you eventually installed a proper OS.