Microsoft Corp is so confident its Windows NT 4.0 server will ship in September amid a fanfare of massive user demand it has upped the price by 13%. Microsoft used to demand about $1,000 for a 10-user license for version 3.51, but will now charge $1,130 for the server. Yesterday Redmond sent Windows NT 4.0 server and workstation to be copied onto disk and packaged up. The retail price of $320 for Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 is unchanged from the current version 3.51, Microsoft says. The workstation upgrade will cost about $150. Microsoft’s sales target for the server is 850,000 copies in this fiscal year, up from 450,000 units of Windows NT Server 3.1 sold in the year to June 30. Microsoft also sold over 1m Windows NT Workstation in the year to June 30.
Microsoft’s new versions bring few surprises. As previously promised, both incorporate the same user interface as Windows 95, while the server is said also to provide performance and scalability improvements; Web-based remote server administration; an Index Server component, said to provide automatic content indexing of HTML pages; FrontPage 1.1 for the development of Web sites; and Microsoft’s Distributed Component Object Model. Microsoft’s Internet Information Server 2.0 is also included. On the Workstation side, 4.0 adds built-in Internet access via Internet Explorer; Peer Web Services for generating Web pages for corporate Intranets; and User Profiles and System Policies, which are designed to control network access, and support users roaming between multiple workstations.
