Will the Next Version of Windows Be Worth the Wait?

I personally went from 95 to XP Pro . . . so I think there will need to be a few more releases before I feel stymied by this current OS. Of course I could always flop over to linux in that timeframe . . . or a future Google/Mozilla web based open source OS. (Just speculation). But one thing for sure, Longhorn will be long in the horn (tooth) by the time it finally arrives. :wink:

 

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The best operating systems are the ones whose upgrades aren't expected to be "new and improved" and when upgraded the results are nearly transparent.

 

I've been a Longhorn watcher for years (because as a Windows application developer, I need to know if that light ahead is the end of the tunnel, or an oncoming train).

Whether Longhorn is worth the wait is a very tough question to answer, because:

• Longhorn is a moving target. There's been a lot of backpeddling on a number of fronts. Some very significant (and also time-consuming and difficult to retrofit) features have gone by the wayside -- the "database filesystem" (at least as fully integrated as was first advertised), etc.
  
  Also, Longhorn was initially advertised as being a lot less backwards-compatible to older Windows software than previous Windows versions. This has also been backpeddled from. Why? See below.
  
• Market forces and Longhorn evolution. Architecturally, Longhorn is the biggest leap Microsoft's made since Windows NT was introduced. Remember that NT actually preceded Windows 95 as the first 32-bit Windows OS. However, its early releases -- NT 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 -- were essentially betas, used by very few people. It wasn't until Windows NT 3.5 that it started to get rolling, and 4.0 was the first version that really caught on.
  
  I don't think Microsoft has the luxury of psuedo-beta Longhorns. More specifically, Microsoft's shareholders won't give them that kind of breathing room. Longhorn is expected to make $$ right out of the gate -- meaning that demands like backwards-compatibility, stability, etc. are going to be expected from the get-go.
  
  For a NextGen OS, that's going to take a lot of work; and I think it justifies much of the backpeddling I'm seeing on MS's part. But it does limit them in how much really revolutionary stuff they can put into the OS.
  
• Hardware requirements. Unless MS has backed off on this, Longhorn is going to require very high-speed, heavy-duty hardware. All the alphas I saw a year ago ran like pigs on the newest, fastest Dell machines we'd seen.
  • 
    All of which means: Stay tuned.

 

The hardware requirements for Longhorn have been so high-end (or at least they were, as of 6 months ago), that we figured there'd be very little market for buying a Longhorn "upgrade" to your existing PC.

I.e., you pretty much have to go out and buy a PC designed to handle Longhorn, to run Longhorn.

 

Lets be honest the current version isn't worht the wait...LOL I wish I could go back to 98

 

Well, I'm using Windows less and less these days -- Linux is my primary OS at work. Which means I'm scratching my chin and thinking about maybe switching to a Mac for home.

That said, I think XP is about the best version of Windows out there -- relative to other versions of Windows. I definitely find it much more stable than Win98 (generally, Windows NT4/2K/XP are more stable than Win95/98/Me).

I still have a soft spot for NT4; it wasn't riddled with as many security holes at the versions of Windows after it. Alas, without USB support, it suffers.