Microsoft is hoping to ship the final version of Windows 2000 on Oct. 6, according to an article in The Standard.

The internal target date was set after Microsoft's development team met a key milestone for the third and final beta of Windows 2000. Until recently known as NT 5.0, the Windows 2000 operating system targets the business market and is meant to overcome many of the deficiencies of NT 4.0, its predecessor, in handling heavy Web traffic.

The consumer version of Windows 2000, which would succeed Windows 98, has been pushed back indefinitely. Instead, Microsoft will release a "second edition" of Windows 98 later this year, with bug fixes and the just-released Internet Explorer 5.0 bundled with it. The full article is available at http://www.thestandard.net .