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They are not announcing it now. They announced this before there was a Windows XP!

After they had Windows 2000 and Windows ME out the door, a bunch of people from Microsoft went to the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort in Canada to plan the next two versions of Windows. They named them after the mountains. Whistler was basically a project to slap the user interface from Windows ME onto Windows 2000 and turn 2000 into something they could ship a Home Edition of. Whistler was to ship in 2001, which it did, as Windows XP.

The next version, Blackcomb, was supposed to totally revolutionize everything and ship in 2005. That is what they are today calling Windows "Vienna".

And in between, they planned an project called Longhorn (after a bar at the ski resort) which was to be a small upgrade of Whistler, like Win98SE was to Win98. That is what they just shipped, as Vista, 4 years after the planned release date in 2003.

Meanwhile, I'm using various GNU-based operating systems and am happier than ever.

XP was code-named "Whistler," a large ski mountain north of Redmond.

Whistler is north of Redmond, but saying it's "north of Redmond" doesn't really do it justice. It's a ski resort (and town) in British Columbia, Canada, north of Vancouver. Pretty cool place, though I hate skiing.

Whistler is a mountain and a city in BC Canada. Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort

BTW: Whistler is going to be one of the venues for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Does the phrase "longhorn" have anything to do with the University of Texas at Austin (who's mascot is the Longhorn)

It's the name of a saloon in Whistler (a ski resort in Canada), positioned between the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. Both Whistler and Blackcomb have also been used as code names for various versions of Windows.

As for Longhorn, you'll still buy it like all the other cattle (Ha! Longhorn! Cattle! Now I see the connection!) when it comes out, by the way, I expect the successor to Longhorn to be Bighorn (Guess the species! ;-)

The name of Longhorn is pretty easy to track if you look at the previous version of Windows (Whistler) and the blue-sky version of Windows (Blackcomb), and know a bit about the Pacific Northwest (specifically, the Whistler ski resort up in Canada). At the Whistler resort, there are two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. Between the lifts for the two mountains, there is a tavern called Longhorn. The initial plan for Windows was supposed to have Longhorn be a small release between XP (Whistler) and Blackcomb, with Blackcomb coming around 2006 or 2007. Thus, Longhorn, because it's a stop on your way from Whistler to Blackcomb. Somewhere along the line, Longhorn became a much more prominant release, so the codename is no longer as appropriate, but that's the root of the name.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has an entry in the XP FAQ (near the top, scroll down about 1/5th of the page) and in the Longhorn FAQ (near the bottom) that mention this in lesser detail, though he gets the location of Longhorn wrong. The Garibaldi Lift Co. is the tavern at the base of Whistler. Quite a nice little tavern, too, if you've got friends who are into skiing or mountain biking and you're not.

As for Longhorn, you'll still buy it like all the other cattle (Ha! Longhorn! Cattle! Now I see the connection!) when it comes out, by the way, I expect the successor to Longhorn to be Bighorn (Guess the species! ;-)

The name of Longhorn is pretty easy to track if you look at the previous version of Windows (Whistler) and the blue-sky version of Windows (Blackcomb), and know a bit about the Pacific Northwest (specifically, the Whistler ski resort up in Canada). At the Whistler resort, there are two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. Between the lifts for the two mountains, there is a tavern called Longhorn. The initial plan for Windows was supposed to have Longhorn be a small release between XP (Whistler) and Blackcomb, with Blackcomb coming around 2006 or 2007. Thus, Longhorn, because it's a stop on your way from Whistler to Blackcomb. Somewhere along the line, Longhorn became a much more prominant release, so the codename is no longer as appropriate, but that's the root of the name.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has an entry in the XP FAQ (near the top, scroll down about 1/5th of the page) and in the Longhorn FAQ (near the bottom) that mention this in lesser detail, though he gets the location of Longhorn wrong. The Garibaldi Lift Co. is the tavern at the base of Whistler. Quite a nice little tavern, too, if you've got friends who are into skiing or mountain biking and you're not.

As for Longhorn, you'll still buy it like all the other cattle (Ha! Longhorn! Cattle! Now I see the connection!) when it comes out, by the way, I expect the successor to Longhorn to be Bighorn (Guess the species! ;-)

The name of Longhorn is pretty easy to track if you look at the previous version of Windows (Whistler) and the blue-sky version of Windows (Blackcomb), and know a bit about the Pacific Northwest (specifically, the Whistler ski resort up in Canada). At the Whistler resort, there are two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. Between the lifts for the two mountains, there is a tavern called Longhorn. The initial plan for Windows was supposed to have Longhorn be a small release between XP (Whistler) and Blackcomb, with Blackcomb coming around 2006 or 2007. Thus, Longhorn, because it's a stop on your way from Whistler to Blackcomb. Somewhere along the line, Longhorn became a much more prominant release, so the codename is no longer as appropriate, but that's the root of the name.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has an entry in the XP FAQ (near the top, scroll down about 1/5th of the page) and in the Longhorn FAQ (near the bottom) that mention this in lesser detail, though he gets the location of Longhorn wrong. The Garibaldi Lift Co. is the tavern at the base of Whistler. Quite a nice little tavern, too, if you've got friends who are into skiing or mountain biking and you're not.

Blackcomb isn't evil... some of the ski runs there are though. Ever heard of Whistler Blackcomb? Yeah, suprisingly those two mountains were around BEFORE Microsoft.

Hey, cool. So it appears that Dubhlinn, Garibaldi, and Dusty's would be appropriate candidates for future version names as well. :)