Microsoft is pushing for an early demise for NT 4.0, and a big switchover to Win2k. We all knew this already, of course, but a report from Paul Thurrott of WinInfo identifies another area where Microsoft is executing the big heave - the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). MSDN Professional and Universal level subscribers receive a master CD set of Microsoft software once a year, with many other drops in between times. The objective of this is to keep them up to date with fully refreshed version of all relevant software. This year's master set has just gone out, and subscribers have noted that Windows NT 4.0 is no longer included. Thurrott has been contacted by several developers about this, and has also discovered that Microsoft has no plans to include Millennium in the CD shipments to MSDN members, on the basis that Millennium is a consumer OS. These two developments hang together in a deliciously Microsftish sort of way. Naturally the company wants developers working on Win2k, so it makes sense to provide them with as much encouragement as possible. But developers aren't stupid, and know there's a large NT market out there that they've been developing for for a while now, and that they're going to want to carry on with until such time as NT fades away. Which could be some years. Microsoft however is cutting off their air supply, albeit only a little bit. They can still get the NT CDs if they ask for them, at least for the moment. The decision not to ship them Millennium also makes it clear that Microsoft sees Win2k, not Win 9x, as the main event and the future. Some developers do want to develop for the consumer market (if you didn't have consumer developers, how come you'd have a use for a consumer OS?), so actually we can see the air supply diminishing here as well. Microsoft is back on its quest for a single consumer and business codebase built on Win2k, so the underlying agenda must actually be that consumer developers ought to be developing for Win2k. Course, if Microsoft said this out loud right now people would just laugh, so it said something different. ® Thurrott is encouraging MSDN subscribers to lobby Microsoft to change its plans. Details and his story can be found here.