Longhorn: We have a date!

In case you haven't seen it yet, we have a date for Longhorn ! News.com's coverage even includes an interview with Bill Gates.

As expected, the company on Friday announced a new road map for Longhorn, its revision to Windows XP. The changes--removing some features and altering others--are designed to let the company have a test version of the software next year and a final release for desktops and notebooks by 2006. A server release is planned for 2007.

As part of the announcement, WinFS got moved to a separate deliverable to ensure it doesn't slow the whole release and Avalon has joined Indigo as a component that will be made available for Windows XP as well. WinFS being moved out of Longhorn will likely affect other WinFS dependent technologies such as MBF, but I'm sure we'll hear more about that later.

The release of the Longhorn wave of technologies will have a big effect on the way that developers build applications. Bill Gates has touted Longhorn as 'the most significant Windows release since Windows 95'.

In other news... Jim Allchin has said that Longhorn's new nickname is 'derogatory'. I hadn't heard it before, so I thought it was funny that the first time I saw a mention of it was when someone was saying "don't say that". The new nickname? Shorthorn. Brilliant ;)

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2004
  We've already had few dates on Longhorn, I wouldn't really get all that excited now.
• Anonymous
  August 31, 2004
  It is the only firm date announcement I have heard in about a year. Ever since the PDC they have been saying 'around the beginning of 2007', so this is a welcome change.
  
  They have a press release about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Aug04/08-27Target2006PR.asp
• Anonymous
  August 31, 2004
  Good news for development community. But I don't believe its firm date announcement. To me its like Lisa Gurry’s announcement done back in June 2004.
  http://www.computerweekly.com/Article131488.htm