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Windows Longhorn Beta for June Release

Posted by Zonk on from the newer-shinier-and-with-horns dept.

An Anonymous Reader writes "According to CNET, the Windows Longhorn Beta 1 is supposedly set for release this June. The Register has commentary on the delays the new OS has faced." From the article: "Longhorn was originally supposed to ship in 2004. In May, this year release was pushed back to 2005. This week Longhorn's availability has been delayed even further, with Microsoft execs declining to say when exactly the operating system might ship, eWeek reports."

10 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. screenshots by Coneasfast · · Score: 2, Informative

    we all love screenshots

    --
    Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
  2. Re:Credibility by Swamii · · Score: 4, Informative

    So what makes this June Release by one Microsoft executive more believable than other announcements?

    The 4 month beta deadline, maybe? All previous announcements have been almost a year ahead of time.

    --
    Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
  3. Re:Hello? by Sophrosyne · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...favorite butt-plug.
    In actuality it is the name of a bar in British Columbia.
    XP, aka Whistler, is the name of a mountain, as is Blackcomb... the bar longhorn is in the middle of the two.
    Product Cycle:
    XP (Whistler)
    Longhorn
    Blackcomb

  4. Re:Slightly off topic, but... by ChatHuant · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  5. Misleading Summary by Morgahastu · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article linked to, and quoted, was published in September of 2003. There is no new delay to speak of.

  6. Re:It's pronounced "Longhaul" by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Informative

    When XP came out, I dont recall any announcement from Microsoft about having to upgrade?! Infact, I recall that the vast majority of 'upgrading' to XP just happened during the normal course of buying a new system as and when required - Win2k or 98 didnt suddenly stop working (did 98 ever start working?). Longhorn will be the same, natural upgrade with new hardware for normal users, those that follow the 'cutting edge' will be buying OS upgrades, and everyone will get on with life.

  7. Re:XP by jalefkowit · · Score: 2, Informative
    I say the same thing, but for Windows 2000. I have yet to find a show stopper at home to upgrade to XP.

    Me neither -- I'm still running Win2K at home quite happily too. However, it's worth noting that Microsoft has at least one potential "show stopper" in the works for us: according to Microsoft's Windows lifecycle roadmap, "mainstream support" for Windows 2000 Professional will be discontinued on June 30 of this year. After that date only "extended support" will be available (through 2010).

    What's the distinction? According to the lifecycle FAQ, here's what those terms mean:

    • Mainstream support includes all the support options and programs that customers receive today, such as no-charge incident support, paid incident support, support that is charged on an hourly basis, support for warranty claims, and hotfix support...
    • Extended support includes all paid support options and security-related hotfix support that is provided at no charge. Hotfix support that is not security-related requires a separate extended hotfix support contract to be purchased within 90 days after mainstream support ends.

    From a practical home-user perspective, this means that you won't be seeing any more Service Packs or updates for Win2K Pro, unless they are to fix a specific security issue. So it'll be interesting to see whether things like new versions of DirectX continue to be provided for 2000 after this summer or not. Anyone out there with more experience on how Microsoft EOL's products who can shed light on what the prospects for things like that are?

    --

    Read my blog.

  8. No Credibility. I have the Alpha. by GFLPraxis · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you guys could see the current state of the Longhorn Alpha...
    It's not near ready for Beta yet...

  9. Re:Credibility by Monkelectric · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's a GREAT SNL skit from the late 80's I want to say with the phil hartman cast... There's a town meeting describing that the towns economy is based on finding "magic fish" that grant wishes. The townspeople are coplainig that the fish are getting harder and harder to find, and the ones that do the quality of them is rotten. If I remember correctly, someone says, "I caught a magic fish the other day, and I asked him for a golden rocketship with diamond windows to take me to the moon! You know what that fish said? He started talking to me about weight ratios and how gold wasn't any good to build a space ship with! SO I bashed his head in on a rock!!"

    Anyways, at the end of the thing Phil Hartman stands up at the meeting and says, "I think we need to transition to a non magic fish based economy." It's one of the best SNL skits ever (and Im the first one to admit SNL sucks).

    Also, I think the magic fish draws a nice parallel to our currently *debt* financed economy (national debt, CC debt, SS debt, medicare debt, etc). But its mostly just for fun :)

    --

    Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

  10. Re:Replacement for SWF, and its implications for M by JesseT · · Score: 2, Informative

    This makes me wonder regarding the status for System.Windows.Forms in Longhorn. Is System.Windows.Forms still the recommended GUI-framework in Longhorn? Is the release of its replacement post-poned? System.Windows.Forms and GDI+ (System.Drawing) are still fully supported in Longhorn, and right now are the recommended way to begin transitioning your applications towards Longhorn. However, Longhorn has an entirely knew API known as WinFX, which is a superset of the .NET Framework. The new GUI is a vector-based 2D and 3D compositing system known as Avalon. Avalon is built on top of DirectX. Avalon, DirectX, and GDI+ are known collectively as the Windows Graphics Foundation or WGF. Avalon has a much larger scope over System.Windows.Forms, and if you would like take a glimpse at all of the new stuff (the new namespaces added under System.Windows), then check out the WinFX API Reference. WinFX is a quite a big step up from traditional Win32 programming. Mono has stated on their roadmap that it is too early to tell if they will support the technologies in Longhorn, but chances are, they eventually will. Avalon seems to be more hardware and platform agnostic than System.Windows.Forms. Things like HWNDs are now hidden behind a polymorphic class interface, and that's just the beginning. You really need to check it out to understand how it works. Anyway, stuff like that should make it easier to port to things like Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, and so on.