'NT' was formerly expanded to 'New Technology' but no longer carries any specific meaning. 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. It was a commercially focused operating system intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS (including Windows 1.0 through Windows 3.1x). The first version of Windows NT was Windows NT 3.1 and was produced for workstations and server computers. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. RSX-11, VAXELN, OpenVMS, MICA, Mach (kernel)ĭepending on version, edition or customer choice: Trialware, commercial software, volume licensing, OEM-only, SaaS, S+S IA-32, x86-64, ARM and ARM64 (and historically Intel i860, DEC Alpha, Itanium, MIPS, and PowerPC) Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services