Microsoft Corp says it has moved up the publication date of its Win32s application programming interface, a subset of the Win32 application programming interface in NT, to this quarter. It is said it can’t get performance from 16-bit Windows applications running on NT, and admits there’s no real point in trying to do it. The company claims that NT is now up on 12 symmetric multiprocessing systems, 395 different personal computer models plus the Digital Equipment Corp Alpha AXP and MIPS Technologies Inc RISC chips. Some 130 NT beta test copies are now out with UK companies, a further 2,500 will be delivered this month: at least 10% of the 45,000 or so NT developer kits shipped worldwide have landed in the UK. X/Open XPG compliance is the next step for NT, Microsoft claims. Meanwhile, Bill Gates seems to feel a lot of his Windows NT business will be upgrades. We’ve heard tell of a $200 upgrade fee from Windows; upgrading from Windows for Workgroups may well be even cheaper.
