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  Windows NT
       
           (Windows New Technology, NT) Microsoft's
          32-bit operating system developed from what was originally
          intended to be OS/2 3.0 before Microsoft and IBM ceased
          joint development of OS/2.  NT was designed for high end
          workstations (Windows NT 3.1), servers (Windows NT 3.1
          Advanced Server), and corporate networks (NT 4.0 Enterprise
          Server).  The first release was Windows NT 3.1.
       
          Unlike Windows 3.1, which was a graphical environment that
          ran on top of MS-DOS, Windows NT is a complete operating
          system.  To the user it looks like Windows 3.1, but it has
          true multi-threading, built in networking, security, and
          memory protection.
       
          It is based on a microkernel, with 32-bit addressing for up
          to 4Gb of RAM, virtualised hardware access to fully protect
          applications, installable file systems, such as FAT, HPFS
          and NTFS, built-in networking, multi-processor support,
          and C2 security.
       
          NT is also designed to be hardware independent.  Once the
          machine specific part - the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)
          - has been ported to a particular machine, the rest of the
          operating system should theorertically compile without
          alteration.  A version of NT for DEC's Alpha machines was
          planned (September 1993).
       
          NT needs a fast 386 or equivalent, at least 12MB of RAM
          (preferably 16MB) and at least 75MB of free disk space.
       
          NT 4.0 was followed by Windows 2000.
       
          Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.setup,
          news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc.
       
          (2002-06-10)