Visual Basic 5 creates programs that run under and use the full features of the latest operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.
Windows NT is rapidly gaining popularity for its stable development environment. Although 16-bit programs run as quickly under Windows 95 as they did under Windows 3.x (albeit with higher memory requirements), they don’t run as quickly under Windows NT, where they need to run in a virtual Windows machine (NTVDM). Generally, 32-bit Visual Basic 4 programs run significantly faster than 16-bit Visual Basic 4 programs under Windows NT. Visual Basic 5 is the best tool with which to develop applications to run under 32-bit operating systems. There is little point in doing 16-bit development unless you are targeting 16-bit operating systems.
Tip If you’re writing 16-bit programs under Windows NT, run Visual Basic in a separate address space. Click the Run In Separate Memory Space check box in the Program Item Properties dialog box in Program Manager when using Windows NT 3.51 or in the shortcut properties if you’re using Windows NT 4. If your program then crashes, you can kill the 16-bit NTVDM session from PView (Process Viewer) in Windows NT 3.51 or earlier versions and from Task Manager in Windows NT 4.
Support for the Power Macintosh range is hinted at throughout the Visual Basic documentation, and this support would provide another market for your Visual Basic programs.