Microsoft promises beta 1 of Longhorn by June

Rethink IT, March, 2005

At a development conference, Microsoft officials last month said a full beta of the next Windows client will arrive by June. The so-called Longhorn is far less of a major upgrade than originally expected, but Microsoft also said it will try to share more sourcecode, such as that for forms technology, and that new team development features are being added to Visual Studio.

Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told News.com. The company has said publicly that Beta 1 of Longhorn would arrive by the end of 2005, though internally the company has been aiming for a release by midyear. The final version of Longhorn is slated for the second half of next year.

Beta I will be the first look at Longhorn in its current form. Microsoft released a developer preview version of Windows at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2003 and updated that early code last spring. However, Longhorn has changed significantly since then, with Microsoft announcing changes in August affecting all three of the key pillars of Longhorn.

Two of the components--a presentation engine called Avalon and a web services architecture called Indigo--are being pulled out of the next Windows release so they can be offered for both Longhorn and the current generation of Windows operating systems. The third major component, a reworking of the Windows file system known as WinFS, has been delayed past Longhorn's release and is expected to be in beta testing when Longhorn ships. It is unclear when WinFS will be integrated into Windows itself.