Gates suggests 2006 Longhorn release

IDG News Service - Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates yesterday suggested 2006 as the release year for the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.
Speaking at Gartner Inc.'s Symposium/ITxpo event in San Diego, Gates stopped short of actually setting a deadline for Longhorn, but he said industry speculation that the operating system will come out in 2006 is "probably valid."
Gates also said Microsoft will release an alpha version of Longhorn later this year. He didn't mention the first beta version, which Microsoft had previously said it would deliver in 2004. A beta is further along in the development cycle of software than an alpha. "We will have an alpha release out this year that everybody can look at," Gates said.
A Microsoft spokesman said the company's goal is still to come out with a Longhorn beta this year, but he added that it plans to release an updated alpha version of the operating system before then. The alpha version will be made available to software developers, but exactly how the company plans to distribute the software is yet to be decided, he said.
At its Windows Engineering Hardware Conference last May, Microsoft said it would deliver Longhorn in 2005, but it later backed away from that commitment. Company executives have since declined to specify a release year for Longhorn, which Gates called a "big breakthrough release" for Microsoft.
Gates cautioned that dates on Longhorn are fluid. "Longhorn is not a date-driven release," he said. There are a lot of technological "must haves" for Longhorn, and those could hold back a release if they aren't completed on time, Gates added.
Software developers have already had a first look at Longhorn. Microsoft released a special preview version of the software at its Professional Developers Conference last October (see story).
Gates, in an onstage interview conducted by Gartner Chairman and CEO Michael Fleisher, also talked about several other topics, including some familiar ones, such as Microsoft's focus on security, the vendor's efforts to combat spam and its multibillion-dollar research and development budget.