Design Goals for Windows

The original goals for Microsoft's NT ("New Technology") operating system took form in early 1989. Interestingly, the original concept for NT did not even include a Windows operating environment. While the NT OS has indeed come a long way since 1989, the five fundamental goals remain intact.

• Compatibility. 
  The OS should support as much existing software and hardware as possible.
  
• Robustness and reliability. 
  The OS should be resilient to inadvertent or intentional misuse. A user's application should not be able to crash the system.
  
• Portability. 
  The OS should run on as many present and future platforms as possible.
  
• Extendibility. 
  Since the market requirements will change (grow) over time, the OS must make it easy to add new features and support new hardware with minimal impact on existing code.
  
• Performance. 
  The OS should provide good performance for a given capability of the hardware platform which hosts it.