The announcement of a Windows 2000 beta release follows 12 months of reversals and detours in Microsoft's core operating-systems product strategy. Beta software is unfinished. It usually comes with a wide variety of bugs and incomplete code.
Beta software is also usually free.
The Comdex announcement follows 12 months of reversals and detours in Microsoft's core operating-systems product strategy. In April 1998, Microsoft invited reporters to its Redmond, Wash., campus to show off Windows 98 and describe the company's ambitious blueprint for the next three years. Anticipating Windows 98's June release, Microsoft executives at the time planned to introduce Windows NT 5.0 by spring 1999, and to make it a one-two punch with the release of Office 2000 around the same time. After that, they planned to introduce a new consumer Windows system, based on NT, in mid- to late 2000. Those plans went awry.