Windows NT 3.51

Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems. It was released on May 30, 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5, and three months before the release of Windows 95. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows on the PowerPC architecture. The second most significant enhancement offered through the release was that it provides client/server support for interoperating with Windows 95, which was released three months after NT 3.51. Windows NT 4.0 became its successor a year later; Microsoft continued to support Windows NT 3.51 until 31 December 2001.

Overview

The release of Windows NT 3.51 was dubbed "the PowerPC release" at Microsoft. The original intention was to release a PowerPC edition of NT 3.5, but according to Microsoft's David Thompson, "we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware". Editions of NT 3.51 were also released for the x86, MIPS, and Alpha architectures.

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing, multi-user operating system.

The first version of Windows NT was Windows NT 3.1 and was produced for workstations and server computers. It was intended to complement consumer versions of Windows (including Windows 1.0 through Windows 3.1x) that were based on MS-DOS. Gradually, the Windows NT family was expanded into Microsoft's general-purpose operating system product line for all personal computers, deprecating the Windows 9x family.

"NT" was formerly expanded to "New Technology" but no longer carries any specific meaning. Starting with Windows 2000, "NT" was removed from the product name and is only included in the product version string.

NT was the first purely 32-bit version of Windows, whereas its consumer-oriented counterparts, Windows 3.1x and Windows 9x, were 16-bit/32-bit hybrids. It is a multi-architecture operating system. Initially, it supported several CPU architectures, including IA-32, MIPS, DEC Alpha and PowerPC. The latest versions support x86 (more specifically IA-32 and x64) and ARM. Major features of the Windows NT family include Windows Shell, Windows API, Native API, Active Directory, Group Policy, Hardware Abstraction Layer, NTFS file system, BitLocker, Windows Store, Windows Update, and Hyper-V.

Windows NT 3.x

Windows NT 3.x can refer to either an individual or all of the following versions of Microsoft Windows:

Dell Dimension

The Dell Dimension series is a line of home and business desktop computers manufactured by Dell. As of June 26, 2007, Dell replaced the low-end Dimension with the Inspiron line of desktop computers, but it later offered higher-end consumer machines under the Studio line in 2008. The Dimension series is now sold to non-American markets. The last of the high-end Dimensions were the 9200 and 9200c (XPS 410 and XPS 210 in the American market, respectively). The E520, E521 and C521 are discontinued, and are now part of the Inspiron line, which was previously only a laptop line, under the names Inspiron 530, 531, 530s and 531s, with a new case design.

Previous models

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows (or simply Windows) is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE) or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x and Windows Mobile.

Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. However, since 2012, because of the massive growth of smartphones, Windows sells less than Android, which became the most popular operating system in 2014, when counting all of the computing platforms each operating system runs on; in 2014, the number of Windows devices sold were less than 25% of Android devices sold. However, comparisons across different markets are not fully relevant; and for personal computers, Windows is still the most popular operating system.