Microsoft Corp’s divorce from IBM Corp becomes final today, Reuter reminds us, suggesting that lingering questions remain future relations between the two. Under the divorce settlement sealed a year ago, Microsoft and IBM will not share information about any operating system software developed after this week. IBM has said it have all the code it needs from Microsoft, and questions are being raised about just how successful Windows NT will be in the near term. There’s a school of thought that says Windows NT is so high end and people who thought it would solve their problems are taking a second look at OS/2, said Chuck Stegman, an analyst for Dataquest in San Jose. In that context, so high end seems to mean simply that it needs so much memory, not that it is full of features that few users yet need. Today, IBM’s software division will receive the latest versions of Microsoft’s work in development, including the Chicago version of Windows. IBM will pay Microsoft royalties for each copy of OS/2 sold over the next five years.
