MS Says Longhorn To Arrive 2005

Lawrence Person writes "According to this article in PC World, Microsoft 'publicly confirmed 2005 as the release year for Longhorn, the successor to Windows XP.' And of course, we all know tha Microsoft release dates never slip..."

Comments

Looks like MOSX

[XnetZERO]

But why would MS want their OS to be pretty? It's ugly on the inside, it might as well be ugly on the outside...

New FS.

[chris_7d0h]

A big change in Longhorn will be the new Windows Future Storage (WinFS) file system, based on SQL Server database technology and designed to give users a direct route to data, making the physical location of a file irrelevant. WinFS replaces the NTFS and FAT32 file systems used in current Windows versions.

And... Why not make it encrypted and require that every application which is loaded into memory is signed with a (MS)key and uses encrypted argument passing like the lovely "blackbox" dll (used in their DRM solution), so that only good and secure(MS certified) applications can access the file system or run at all? This ought to protect (stop) the average user (pirate) from accidentally (intentionally) running Hacker (ordinary and popular) tools, like non-MS development environments, debuggers or those pesky (great) hacker (command line) GNU utilities from the FSF hacker (support) organization.

The REAL reason for a 2005 release date...

[LilMikey]

... is because that's the optimal way to make money off of their product lifecycle sceme. C'mon people, this is slashdot and you all are missing the obvious jab. Windows 2000, the GOOD Windows, falls out of 'Mainstream Support' in 2005. 2003 has no real advantages over 2000 so what are people supposed to do?

In 2005, you could either 1. Upgrade to Longhorn dumping tons of money and effort converting to what will essentially be beta software (let's throw EVERYTHING on their new untested filesystem.) or 2. Pay a heap in licensing to baby step up to 2003. You'll re-buy licenses for all of your systems and tide yourself over for 3 more years while still running what is essentially Windows 2000. By 2003's EOL, Longhorn 2008 will be ready for release and maybe even almost kinda sort stable and secure (at least through MS tinted glasses).

Make no mistake about it. Their release dates are not scheduled because the product is 'done' or 'working' or because people 'want' or 'need' it. They're schedule in order to most efficiently screw the consumer. Check out their Product Lifecycle crap to see when your next forced upgrade is.