WinHEC 2005 - Keynote and Day 1

More on Longhorn

With Longhorn on the horizon, one of the concerns invariably becomes preparing for the upcoming launch. No one wants to spend a lot of money on a new PC today that will become obsolete with the launch of a new OS.



Thankfully, the requirements for Longhorn drivers are now finalized. That was one of the announcements of the first day, that the Longhorn Driver Model is now complete. Microsoft provided attendees with the appropriate information on CD, as well as the basic hardware requirements. Partners can already begin preparing for the launch with the "Longhorn Ready PC" program.



The roadmap for Longhorn is already well underway. Further information and details will be given to partners over the coming months, with the Beta 1 stage coming this summer followed later in the year by the Beta 2 stage. As we talked about with XP-64, MS is planning to take some time finalizing the code for Longhorn, and the tentative release date is the end of 2006 for the client platform. That leaves them nearly a year to work from the Beta 2 stage up through the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) stage. It's tough to come up with a conspiracy for why MS would intentionally delay Longhorn, and as with XP-64 we feel that the timeline is simply meant to give them the best chance of a smooth launch.



The above timeline for Longhorn is for the client version. The server version will follow, although it could trail by as much as a year. Between now and the launch of Longhorn Server we will see several updates to the Windows 2003 Server OS. We'll see how Microsoft does in terms of executing these plans, although "Holiday 2006" is still a rather vague on release date. Don't hold your breath....