Author: Blue Horizon
Another build surfaces thanks to warez archival, so now I gotta fill in the gaps again. This particular release is the last one from 1997, as the very next known build is dated from 1998. Speaking of which, there's not much to discuss here since its very similar to #nt5-1729 as expected, but like always undisclosed development information is abound.
This is the first known build to transition to the near finalized setup wizard interface. On this first step you can find an amusing typo here.
This is also the last build to have the Windows 9x style components list and setup options.
Same Windows 2000 style copying dialogs, except smaller. And also the restart timer.
As with build 1729, it has the Beta 2 watermark in the corner when logging in (even though this is still Beta 1 stage).
The Outlook Express icon actually turns up here, unlike in the build mentioned above.
I completely glanced over this before, but IE doesn't report a version number oddly enough.
Active Channels just opens IE in full-screen, and the Channels toolbar on the left is still contentless.
One interesting thing I never covered was that NT 5.0 retains the same web assets from Windows 98 all unchanged. Reminds me of Whistler 2211 where the control panel page is lifted straight from Windows ME.
Also, any particular reason that the toolbar buttons are pink and purple?
HyperHelp is of course present here, having the '98-ish' style cirrus clouds.
A screenshot foreshadowing the updated HyperTerminal - why not.
That's really all I have to say for this build. Not much, but I did uncover more little secrets about the early NT 5.0 development phase and what the developers were going for.