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Microsoft: Longhorn to arrive in 2005

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Thought this might be of some interest...

Source: News.com

NEW ORLEANS--Longhorn, the next major version of Windows for desktop PCs, will debut in 2005 and will usher in a new level of graphics for PCs, Microsoft executives said Wednesday.

While Microsoft plans to release "a couple of beta," or test, versions of Longhorn in 2004, the final version of the operating system won't come out commercially until 2005, said Will Poole, senior vice president of the Windows Client division at Microsoft. He made the comments during a speech delivered at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here. Previously, analysts and sources had speculated that Longhorn would come out in late 2004 or early 2005.

"The weight of the company is behind Longhorn," Poole said. "This is a huge bet for the company. It will really change the landscape of what people see."



With Longhorn, Microsoft hopes to improve the visual quality of the computing experience. Company representatives at a WinHEC demonstration of a pre-beta version of Longhorn said that the goal is to be able to run the OS on screens with a resolution of 120 dots per inch or higher.

That's far more refined than screens today. Current 17-inch SXGA displays have a resolution of about 95 dots per square inch, said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at market research firm IDC.

More dots lead to crisper, more defined images. They can also make it easier to view high-resolution images. Increasing the resolution on a current monitor shrinks the size of the image, a phenomenon that can be observed by cranking the resolution setting in a computer's control panel to the maximum. At some top settings, text becomes almost impossible to read. With a higher overall resolution, users won't have to go to the extremes of the resolution spectrum.

"Higher isn't better, if everything gets smaller," said O'Donnell.

"When we come to Longhorn, the experience of your desktop is going to be absolutely stunning," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of chip designer Nvidia, on Tuesday. More Longhorn details are expected to be released on Thursday, during technical sessions at WinHEC.



Longhorn's debut is closely tied to Microsoft's work on a new, underlying file system derived from the company's database development. That system is designed to make it easier for people to find information on PC hard drives and across networks. The software maker plans to introduce the new file system as part of Longhorn and also as part of Yukon, the code-named next version of its SQL Server database software.



Dubbed Windows Future Storage (WinFS), the file system is a new means of storing, accessing or indexing files. It would replace NTFS and FAT32, which are used by Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows.



In recent months, successively more advanced test versions of Longhorn have been leaked onto the Web, leading observers to speculate that Microsoft has stepped up its development work. Lending credence to those claims, the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker recently shipped Windows Server 2003, the server counterpart to Longhorn, which could free up its internal developers to concentrate on Longhorn.



Longhorn: Graphically speaking
Also on Wednesday, Microsoft representatives showed off an early test version of Longhorn with an applet (a small program that can be downloaded quickly and used by a computer with a Web browser) that lets applications shrink proportionally on the screen. In the applet, two identical electronic calculators were displayed, but one was noticeably larger than the other. The smaller calculator, however, was identical, proportionally, to the larger one. In Windows PCs today, only similar applications at the same resolution are identical.

The applet, however, remains under development, said company representatives. The difficulty in development of the applet, they said, is in coming up with a way to allow the mouse to shift between applications of different resolutions.

On top of this, Longhorn is intended to continue Microsoft's strategy of making the PC the nerve center of the home entertainment network. As expected, the company demonstrated new technologies at WinHEC to push that strategy with current versions of Windows.

Senior department editor Michael Kanellos scrutinizes the hardware industry in a weekly column that ranges from chips to servers and other critical business systems. Enterprise Hardware every Wednesday.

"The average American housewife is not going to let someone bring a minitower into the living room," said Mark Vena, a director at Dell Computer said in an interview last week, explaining why Dell has yet to release a media center PC.

The ATI-Microsoft set-top box, which runs the Windows CE .Net operating system, is connected to a television and ferries data back and forth between the television and a PC.

Microsoft also formally unveiled a media transport protocol, which makes it easier to swap files, and its Universal Audio Architecture, a set of drivers that will simplify the process of hooking up a PC to audio devices.

In the end, such improvements in function and usability could spark a cycle of purchases, analysts said.

"The problem we need to look at is: Why is it that consumers and business customers of all kinds feel what they have is good enough?" said Poole.

Between now and the release of Longhorn, Microsoft will continue to tweak its existing operating systems, Poole said. In addition, a new version of its handwriting recognition engine will come out for Tablet PC, he added. And a European version of Windows XP Media Center with better TV programming data will also emerge.

Overall, though, there won't be a major code retrofit. "Don't expect an interim release," of Windows before Longhorn, Poole said.
 
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2005 is a long ways away. A lot of that stuff Apple can do. Wonder what Apple has planned for 2005. A lot of time for competition to catch up / take over.
 
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a lot of that stuff apple already does or probably is near completion of. The graphics on my powerbook severely outmatch those on my windows box. My windows box is a top of the line machine, with a top of the line video card, and OS X blows it away when it comes to rendering the desktop and applications. 2005 apple will have technologies that windows wont see until 2009 - 2010. Apple always has seemed to me to be a bit ahead of the curve.
 
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hokiethang said:
a lot of that stuff apple already does or probably is near completion of. The graphics on my powerbook severely outmatch those on my windows box. My windows box is a top of the line machine, with a top of the line video card, and OS X blows it away when it comes to rendering the desktop and applications. 2005 apple will have technologies that windows wont see until 2009 - 2010. Apple always has seemed to me to be a bit ahead of the curve.

The really sad thing is that my Risc-PC blows them both away in terms of the look of the gui and it hasn't been upgraded since 1997. At that time it's 200+ Mip processor and proportional anti-aliased fonts were revolutionary but obviously with the comapny going to the wall it never progressed to USB (or even PCI!) nor did the graphics processor progress much (no hardware 3D for example) but it still look pretty even now.

The Apple looks almost as good, for some reason the font rendering is just slighty poorer at the same screen resolutions, but it is interesting that much of the look and feel of Risc-OS invented back in the early 90's has eventually made it to both Windross and Mac OS, i.e task bar (Launcher in Win, Dock as Apple call it) pop-up context sensitive menus, traslucant window drags, fully integrated drag and drop, integrated apps etc. Just shows how far ahead Acorn really were back then.

I note that in the Mac OSX book I have it makes a big deal of "bundles" and "Frameworks", Risc-OS had this concept back in the late 80's!

Oh well at least the core technology survived, StrongArm chip design was bought up by Intel and Motorola and can be found in both the PPC and P4. Also virtually every major PDA and mobile phone uses ARM chip designs.

If you bought ARM shares when they originally split from Acorn they cost about 20 pence, a few years ago they were 40 pounds a share although they've dropped off since in the downturn.

Amen-Moses
 
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Looks like M$ needs more time to dissassemble Panther, so they can put their GUI front end on it, and call it Longhorn.

lol :p
 
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and dont forget about 10.4 and possible betas of 10.5... they want apple to find all the bugs fir them first ;)
 
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wow so much for all pc users saying longhorn will destroy OSX when it comes out.
 

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Apple maybe on Mac OS X 11.0, 12.0 or even back to 1.0.
 
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Yeah, longhorn wont destroy OSX when it comes out. Because by that time Apple will have another better OS version that will blow longhorn out of the water :)

We have the G5 (but by 2005 they better have an equal chip or thats just sad) we can test things that they can't in the real world. You know longhorn will have so many bugs.

(I just couldn't get to like windows with the white mouse cursor :) )
 
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are you some kind of racist pig you!?!?
/end internet sarcasm
 
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Actually you guys might want to read this article:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994215

Im pretty excited about the thing.. Im not sure why since Im not going to have Windows loaded on my machine, but I do know people that this would help them to switch to mac :)
 
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Surprisingly im impressed.
 

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daast ist preeety coolen
 
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Longhorn delay has Windows users considering OS X

Source: MacMinute.com

Longhorn delay has Windows users considering OS X
October 21, 2003 - 11:49 EDT Microsoft Watch has posted a number of e-mails from readers who say they are considering switching to Mac OS X due to the delay of Longhorn, Microsoft's next major version of Windows. "Apple is already many years ahead in several areas compared to Win XP (Quartz Extreme)," writes PHP programmer Adam Chaney. "And with Panther less then 10 days from release. It will make Apple look even better because they can ship an OS with real reasons to upgrade while MS cannot for three years. Three years is an eternity in computer time. By the time MS gets its act together, people may have gotten tired of banging on MS's door and have gone across the street to the open door with the big sign that reads 'Come on in!, No Worms in this Apple.'"

My Comments: Yeah they better get their act together if they are going to keep their user base.. they'll still keep most of them, but a lot of people are not that patient.. plus they'll see this as an omen of things to come with MS... I am quite curious to see where Apple and MS will be in 10 years.. and I guess I'll just have to wait.
 

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If the is simialr to M$ Internet Explorer and Netscape. Then M$ will have a big problem. Apple with have to push the envelope even more. If more people start to move over.
 
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Thats just down right... right :)
 
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or... we could just run VPC when we need to open some Win App.

Why would you run 2 side by side?

sKaD
 

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