Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Longhorn Release Date Slips to 2006?
Posted by Kent Pribbernow in "NEWS" @ 11:00 AM
Eek! 8O Just when you thought this project couldn't possibly fall any further behind, we get another unpleasant surprise. Longhorn won't see the light of day until sometime in 2006 at the earliest. "Speaking at Gartner's Symposium/ITexpo event in San Diego Monday, Gates stopped short of setting 2006 as the year for Longhorn. He said, however, that industry speculation that the operating system will come out in 2006 is "probably valid speculation."
Gates also said Microsoft will release an alpha version of Longhorn later this year. He did not mention the first beta version that Microsoft had said earlier it would deliver in 2004. A beta is further along in the development cycle of software than an alpha. "We will have an alpha release out this year that everybody can look at," Gates said."
How disappointing. :cry: I'm really looking forward to the exciting new features of this operating system, especially the new GUI and composition engine which should put it on par with OSX. Microsoft is really putting all its resources behind Longhorn, which I believe will prove to be the most critical OS release Microsoft has ever developed. For the first time in MANY years, Microsoft is going to innovate in a big way.
The biggest downside to this is that digital media and devices will continue to advance in Longhorn's absence, which could prove problematic for the consumer electronics industry as well as consumers. This delay increases the likelihood we will see some kind of an interim Windows upgrade release beyond the upcoming XP Service Pack 2. Windows XP-Me perhaps? :wink:
