Exceptional HW & incompatibility?
Why not compare with Xenix, OS/2, BSD Unix, AT&T UNIX and VMS resources?
Comparison with MS-DOS/PC-DOS, Concurrent CP/M, CP/M 80, CP/M 86, Intel ISIS II, Apple II DOS etc is pointless.
Curiously there was an MS OS/2 which included MS LAN Manager in 1989, is that why NT starts at 3.x? Also NT ran OS/2 text mode (console) programs on OS/2 subsystem, MSDOS command instead of NT cmd on an NTVDM, and 16 bit Win 3.x programs using WOW translation of 16 bit WinAPI to 32 bit NT API and NTVDM. So NT 3.51 & NT4.0 ran Win3.x & win95 mixed 16bit/32bit mixed programs faster on the Pentium Pro than Win95 did. Win9x killed the Pentium Pro.
NT was held back for 10 years by success of Win9x and badly written windows programs that ignored security APIs and needed Admin mode. Properly written Win32 programs, even written for NT3.1, worked fine on NT4.0, Win2K, XP, Vista/Win7 without being Admin.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
