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• May 9, 2003 •
During his keynote address of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2003, Will Poole, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Windows Platforms Group, for the first time gave some details on the roadmap for delivering "Longhorn", the code-name of the next Windows version currently in early development. Contrary to earlier reports, Longhorn will not ship in beta form until early 2004, and its release to manufacturing (RTM) will not be until 2005, Poole said.
"As everybody knows, Longhorn is the big goal for us from an operating system perspective that we are putting all of our effort behind" Poole said. "This is a huge, big, bet-the-company move, and it's one that we are very enthusiastic about what we're able to do here. The breakthrough work that we're going to do in 'Longhorn' is going to really change the landscape of what consumers, what businesspeople see when they look at a new PC."
"So the road between now and 'Longhorn' is not super short. We've got some work to do. It's going to take us a while to get there. And what you'll see is there are a couple of major milestones, a couple big road signs there."
"The next major milestone from a developer perspective will be in October of this year with our Professional Developers Conference" according to Poole, who continued: "Over the course of 2004 you'll see a couple of releases in the betas for 'Longhorn' and we'll see that coming to market in 2005."
There has also been discussion if Microsoft would do an interim release (of Windows XP). Poole also addressed this in his keynote when he said: "Now, I'm sure that many of you have heard about or wonder about the possibility of whether we're going to do something before 'Longhorn', is there an interim release, and that's something that I don't expect us to do. Currently we have some additional releases that are coming out as follow-ons to the XP Media Center Edition and the Tablet PC Edition so we've got some great advances and fit and finish and addressing additional international marketplaces with new handwriting recognition, new guide data for Europe for the Media Center and so on."
"So you'll see some good incremental moves there but really the weight of the company, the weight of all the people in the Windows client division and across the platform's division, the weight of that effort that we're doing is around 'Longhorn' and that's what we're focused on and we hope to get you all really pulling the same way so we can come out with a huge wave of excitement for the industry when 'Longhorn' ships in 2005."
So it seems that (like previous versions) the "Longhorn" release has already slipped a little. At least if you want to believe that early estimates called for a beta by the end of this year. Microsoft never 'officially' announced any dates until now, so now we have something to go on.
