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Microsoft ended a couple years of speculation about the roadmap for the Longhorn desktop OS with an announcement today that it is targeting 2006 for release of the client.
That's a big target. To hit it, Redmond has severed key features from the next-generation client operating system, planning to deliver them separately and later. For the Windows "Longhorn" Server operating system, Microsoft is shooting for 2007.
"When we finished XP Service Pack 2, the team poked their head up and said, 'What do we need to do to ship Longhorn?'" said John Montgomery, Microsoft's director of the .Net development platform. "We took a look at customer feedback and decided that we needed to get the Longhorn release in the hands of customers sooner rather than later." .......
 News source: Internetnews
Longhorn development fell behind after Microsoft was forced to pull developers off the project to assist with getting Windows XP Service Pack 2 out the door.
Longhorn has three major components: Win FS, a file storage subsystem; Indigo, a messaging infrastructure based on a Web services-oriented architecture; and Avalon, the graphics presentation subsystem.
WinFS supposedly will marry SQLServer's database indexing capabilities with the computer file system so that users can easily save and search for a variety of file types, from photos to e-mail to documents and media. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in February, Microsoft said WinFS would be a key breakthrough in Longhorn, while Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates promised a fairly capable build of WinFS for developers in 2004.
Instead, Microsoft said it would deliver WinFS after the Longhorn release, but that it should have a beta version ready when the Longhorn client is available.
Microsoft is tying Longhorn to 64-bit computing, which Microsoft believes will be ubiquitous by 2006.
In a meeting with Microsoft evangelists, company brass promised that Windows WinFX developer technologies for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, including Avalon and Indigo, will ship in 2006. The tools will let developers write software that works on XP and Windows 2003, as well as Longhorn systems.
While Microsoft will separate development of the WinFS file subsystem, delivering it later, the engineers also made an addition: They'll make parts of the WinFX development tools for Avalon available to run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
"ISVs found the WinFX programming module very compelling," Montgomery said. "At the same time, they wanted to see the reach broadened, so they could touch more systems with it."
The task is not trivial, and Microsoft will have to make some engineering trade-offs. For example, the user experience of graphics created with Avalon/WinFX won't be as snappy under XP.
"When I was briefing customers, ISVs were extremely excited," Montgomery said. "They felt it would approve adoption. Customers don't have to install a whole new operating system in order to get some of the benefits of Longhorn."
This componentization is not necessarily a bad thing, according to James Governor, an analyst with Redmonk. "I believe the majority customers will be pleased to see that Indigo and Avalon are going to be available for their existing operating environments, rather than solely tied to Longhorn."
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