PC World Longhorn Preview

[K. Eng]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121435,00.asp

I'm honestly not sure how this improves over Windows XP other than the fact that the interface is supposed to be prettier. Based on the sceen shots, I'm not even convinced that the interface is any better.

Has anyone here tried the latest build? Any comments on if the OS is improved in functionality?

Longhorn will support both 32-bit x86 and x64 platforms:

all editions of Longhorn will include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. (Microsoft officials say that they are still mulling over whether features included in the Tablet PC and Media Center editions of XP will continue to require special editions of Windows.)

[jdhurst]

This will be a very tough sell for Microsoft. Recent news reports suggest that Windows XP is a tough sell for corporations representing millions of computers. Windows 2000 works well enough for them to avoid upgrading. If there is no need for them to go to XP, nothing I know of will push them to Longhorn. And so long as Palladium is threatening us, along with non-compliant hardware, those of us already on XP may well avoid Longhorn as well. ... JD Hurst

[benplaut]

the progression:

MSDOS > Win 95 > Win 98 (same hardware) > Win XP > Linux

i really like Win 2000... but so few people use it...

[Toe]

Bplaut, Very few home users have win2k....Many Business computers use it....I think it's 50/50 with XP and 2K....

-Toe

[K. Eng]

Windows 2000 is still very very popular with a lot of businesses and government organizations that I have come into contact with. It just seems to work well for a lot of these corporations, and they have zero compelling reasons to upgrade.

I'm hoping that Longhorn will have something inspiring... I'm hoping for a new command line interface and a cleaned up GUI, but the Beta screenshots are just boring.

MacOS X on the other hand is pretty slick.

i really like Win 2000... but so few people use it...

[AlphaKilo470]

Supposedly, all the icons and other graphics in Longhorn will be vecotr based and Longhorn is also supposed to have a new database driven filesystem.

[kaplanfx]

Supposedly, all the icons and other graphics in Longhorn will be vecotr based and Longhorn is also supposed to have a new database driven filesystem.

According to MS, winfs (the database filesystem) will NOT be ready for Longhorns release. In addition, again according to microsoft, winfs will be avialable to WinXP users.

-kaplanfx

[AlphaKilo470]

WinFS: Not gonna make it in time you say? Not surprising. Seems Microsoft, despite having pretty good and functional software, never seems to be able to hold to deadlines.

Past examples of missed deadlines:
Windows Chicago (Windows 95) was originally slated for '93 or '94 if I'm not mistaken.

They totally missed the boat with Windows 96 (I have a beta copy if anyone wants it), though it would have been a pointless OS anyways.