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Will Longhorn be worth the pain?

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Longhorn

Cath Everett ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 18 Mar 2005 17:25 GMT

As a result, the decision to "carefully extract" the three, much-hyped pillars "leaves Longhorn on shaky foundations and Microsoft will have to muster all of its marketing smarts to highlight the benefits of the under-hyped operating system fundamentals such as security and management capabilities".

Jump likewise feels that the removal of WinFS in particular means that the client version of Longhorn at least is unlikely to be as "revolutionary" a release as first expected.

"WinFS was very compelling, but Longhorn is still changing every six months so it's a bit early to say whether it will be very different to XP. We'll just have to wait and see what's included, but it appears to be just another Windows OS that's more of an evolution than was originally planned," she says.

Mark Quirk, head of technology at Microsoft's developer and platform group, acknowledges that making Avalon and Indigo available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 means that "the core of Longhorn is an evolution of where we are today".

"We do see the usability and productivity characteristics of Longhorn as more revolutionary, however. We know computers are still hard to use and manage and we expect Longhorn to deliver major improvements here," he adds.

While Quirk refuses to be drawn on specific functionality, saying that Microsoft doesn't "want to give the game away too early", he does hint that more will be revealed when the vendor ships the first Longhorn beta, which is expected some time this summer.

He also indicates that the supplier's key marketing messages now relate to increased reliability, security, and usability, which, he claims, will result in higher levels of end user productivity and "empowerment".

Another key catchphrase, "ease of deployment", will also be highlighted. "We're doing a lot of work on deployment both for new customers and upgrades. We think it's one of the most fundamental areas to address and we'll have new facilities in Longhorn to make it easier to upgrade," Quirk says.