NT4 wasn't really fit for purpose until SP6 - which was so large it was more like a new OS - and SP6 was released over a year after USB 1.1.
Some of us were trying to use NT4 on our workstations as it was more stable than win98 so USB would have been nice. Acutally, it was because NT4 couldn't run a dial-up modem that I switched to Linux. If I've needed to use an MS only tool (VB6, XML Spy) I've run Windows in an VM - and actually Win2000 worked well in a VM - the bloated XP, not so good.