How Microsoft Is Clipping Longhorn

[Chris]

To get the already-delayed follow-up to Windows XP out the door by 2006, it has decided to omit some of the most ambitious features

Never in its history has Microsoft (MSFT ) had to wait so long between Windows releases. When Windows XP launched in October, 2001, researcher Gartner Inc. expected the software giant to gin up a new version within two years. But Microsoft's ambitious follow-up to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, has bogged down in delays. The company rarely discloses timelines for products, lest it miss its targets. But in copies of two e-mail messages obtained by BusinessWeek, Microsoft lays out a roadmap that shows Longhorn debuting in the first six months of 2006.

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[trackrat]

NEXT TIME. While Microsoft has scaled back the Longhorn vision, its ambition hasn't disappeared. It plans to continue pursuing the sweeping goal of creating a new, full-featured file system. But it's deferring that until Blackcomb, the code name for the version of Windows that follows Longhorn.

"It's fair to say we've had very ambitious dreams that were very large for Longhorn," Peterson said in the Apr. 1 meeting. "Some of the things that we do in the big dream, we are going to do in the Blackcomb time frame." When will Blackcomb debut? Probably near the end of the decade.