The most common form of the Resource Kits are as a large book or box set of books which come with CD-ROM(s), both of which have been supplemented in some cases such as the Resource Kits for Windows NT Server versions 3.51 and 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server.
The Resource Kits, especially in the case of the Windows NT-2000 stream of operating systems, also include third-party software like various versions of Crystal Reports and PowerDesk.
Those seeking Windows-Unix interoperability in various forms can also use an unrelated software product, Windows Services For Unix, which contains such items as the Interix C and Korn shells, ActiveState's ActivePerl and many other Posix-compliant tools and additions to the operating system.
Interpreters for programming languages such as Perl, Rexx, KiXtart, awk and a version of the Unix Korn shell are available with many of the operating system Resource Kits, including those for both the Windows 95-98 and Windows NT-2000 streams of operating systems.
Resource Kits were also not produced for Microsoft's two non-Windows operating systems, OS/2 (prior to version 3.0) and Xenix mainly because they were not actively promoted after 1991.
The Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kits (Workstation and Server) contained a particularly large number of tools and utilities as well as third-party software.
The tools included in these kits for command-line use are considered by many Windows NT shell programmers to be essential to getting the full use of the facility.
The Windows Vista Resource Kit ships with several sample VBScripts and few PowerShell scripts.
[8] Microsoft has announced that new unsupported Resource Kit tools will not be provided for current and future operating systems.