NT has several uncommon password features. The casual user often considers their password to be an annoying but necessary part of their login procedure. They do not think in terms of a coherent, comprehensive password policy, as a system administrator must. Users are exhorted to select good passwords that are easily remembered, not easily guessed, sufficiently long, obscure, and never shared. They might not do so if they knew how easy it is to crack a short, simple password.
Contemporary computers are much faster and current software is much smarter.
Some claim to be more effective than others. Protection from the former involves increasing the complexity, number, and mix of password characters that must be checked. Protection from the latter involves enhancing the physical security of network connections. The program can examine password hashes from the Registry or the Security Account Manager file or input from packet capture. It is designed to run under Administrator privileges and is not intended as a hacker tool.