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NT was called "New Technology" literally because it was a new technology. It was based on the NT kernel (which is used now) as opposed to the 9x/MS-DOS kernels

NT was called "New Technology" literally because it was a new technology. It was based on the NT kernel (which is used now) as opposed to the 9x/MS-DOS kernels used in 1.0-Me. Also, NT came before 95. Specifically, as Windows NT 3.1.

vram22 10y ago
>NT was called "New Technology" literally because it was a new technology. It was based on the NT kernel (which is used now) as opposed to the 9x/MS-DOS kernels used in 1.0-Me. Thanks; I was aware of that when I wrote my comment that you replied to. I was around in tech when NT was released, so I had read the expansion of the acronym then in the media. In fact I had read the book Inside Windows NT (the one by Helen Custer, a good one) some time after it came out. Remember it talking about Dave Cutler as the main NT architect, his DEC VMS background, etc. And it had a fair amount of interesting content about NT internals. Also remember trying this Linux C utility that I wrote, selpg (which I posted about in this other recent HN thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960242), on Win NT, because I had read that it had a POSIX subsystem (then and for a while). And it worked on it, including the POSIX popen() call (though not to an lp command, since NT didn't have a UNIX-like lp subsystem). My point in mentioning marketing was that even if Windows NT really was new technology (and it was), giving the name "New Technology" was somewhat unusual (after all, any non-trivial product upgrade is usually new tech, unless only cosmetic) , and so I thought it might have been the marketing folks's decision. And we know that marketing people do sometimes push product names for marketing reasons, that tech people might not always agree with. That's all there was to it. >Also, NT came before 95. Specifically, as Windows NT 3.1. I did clearly say above: "(might have got some of the order wrong there)."

vram22 10y ago

>NT was called "New Technology" literally because it was a new technology. It was based on the NT kernel (which is used now) as opposed to the 9x/MS-DOS kernels used in 1.0-Me. Thanks; I was aware of that when I wrote my comment that you replied to. I was around in tech when NT was released, so I had read the expansion of the acronym then in the media. In fact I had read the book Inside Windows NT (the one by Helen Custer, a good one) some time after it came out. Remember it talking about Dave Cutler as the main NT architect, his DEC VMS background, etc. And it had a fair amount of interesting content about NT internals. Also remember trying this Linux C utility that I wrote, selpg (which I posted about in this other recent HN thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960242), on Win NT, because I had read that it had a POSIX subsystem (then and for a while). And it worked on it, including the POSIX popen() call (though not to an lp command, since NT didn't have a UNIX-like lp subsystem). My point in mentioning marketing was that even if Windows NT really was new technology (and it was), giving the name "New Technology" was somewhat unusual (after all, any non-trivial product upgrade is usually new tech, unless only cosmetic) , and so I thought it might have been the marketing folks's decision. And we know that marketing people do sometimes push product names for marketing reasons, that tech people might not always agree with. That's all there was to it. >Also, NT came before 95. Specifically, as Windows NT 3.1. I did clearly say above: "(might have got some of the order wrong there)."