Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Windows NT
     
         (Windows New Technology, NT) {Microsoft}'s
        32-bit {operating system} developed from what was originally
        intended to be {OS/2} 3.0 before {Microsoft} and {IBM} ceased
        joint development of OS/2.  NT was designed for high end
        {workstations} (Windows NT 3.1), servers (Windows NT 3.1
        Advanced Server), and corporate networks (NT 4.0 Enterprise
        Server).  The first release was {Windows NT 3.1}.
     
        Unlike {Windows 3.1}, which was a graphical environment that
        ran on top of {MS-DOS}, Windows NT is a complete operating
        system.  To the user it looks like Windows 3.1, but it has
        true {multi-threading}, built in networking, security, and
        {memory protection}.
     
        It is based on a {microkernel}, with 32-bit addressing for up
        to 4Gb of {RAM}, virtualised hardware access to fully protect
        applications, installable file systems, such as {FAT}, {HPFS}
        and {NTFS}, built-in networking, {multi-processor} support,
        and {C2 security}.
     
        NT is also designed to be hardware independent.  Once the
        machine specific part - the {Hardware Abstraction Layer} (HAL)
        - has been ported to a particular machine, the rest of the
        operating system should theorertically compile without
        alteration.  A version of NT for {DEC}'s {Alpha} machines was
        planned (September 1993).
     
        NT needs a fast {386} or equivalent, at least 12MB of {RAM}
        (preferably 16MB) and at least 75MB of free disk space.
     
        NT 4.0 was followed by {Windows 2000}.
     
        {Usenet} newsgroups: {news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.setup},
        {news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc}.
     
        (2002-06-10)