Windows Longhorn Due in 2005

[Saru]

Not new news this, but I don't think it's been mentioned on here yet.

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Longhorn, the next major version of Windows for desktop PCs, will debut in 2005 and will usher in a new level of graphics for PCs, Microsoft executives said Wednesday. While Microsoft plans to release "a couple of beta," or test, versions of Longhorn in 2004, the final version of the operating system won't come out commercially until 2005, said Will Poole, senior vice president of the Windows Client division at Microsoft. He made the comments during a speech delivered at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here.

"When we come to Longhorn, the experience of your desktop is going to be absolutely stunning," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of chip designer Nvidia, on Tuesday. More Longhorn details are expected to be released on Thursday, during technical sessions at WinHEC.

Longhorn's debut is closely tied to Microsoft's work on a new, underlying file system derived from the company's database development. That system is designed to make it easier for people to find information on PC hard drives and across networks. The software maker plans to introduce the new file system as part of Longhorn and also as part of Yukon, the code-named next version of its SQL Server database software. Dubbed Windows Future Storage (WinFS), the file system is a new means of storing, accessing or indexing files. It would replace NTFS and FAT32, which are used by Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows.

Source : Zdnet

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It sounds promising, but will the new version of Windows improve to any great extent on XP ?