http://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspxI'm currently in Bellevue, WA, attending a Microsoft event for us developer evangelists, and I'm just back into my hotel room from a meeting with Jim Allchin who gave us an update on the Longhorn roadmap - you can read the official press release hereen-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP1 (Build: 61025.2)http://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspx#221804Sat, 28 Aug 2004 07:17:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:221804Stefán JökullPixel based? I thought Avalon was all about vector graphics, XAML and 3D acceleration. This can hardly be called Avalon anymore if the whole vector concept has to go! :/http://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspx#221807Sat, 28 Aug 2004 07:25:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:221807JoshI'm not sure why it is good news that Longhorn will ship in 2006. Sure, it is good news that we will have Avalon + Indigo in 2006, on our XP/2003 machines. But why should we care about Longhorn? Microsoft will have to do a lot of re-education about what Longhorn is. Up until now, it has been explained as pillars: WinFS, Avalon, Indigo. Now we see none of them will be tied to Longhorn. So...http://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspx#221996Sat, 28 Aug 2004 14:35:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:221996Digging .NETLonghorn newshttp://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspx#222076Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:54:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:222076David MorrisThis may sound like an idiot simple answer, but why are the development team conforming strictly to the planned release date? Wouldn't it be better to wait a little longer for a release that was more like what was originally proposed?http://blogs.msdn.com/frankpr/archive/2004/08/27/221754.aspx#222564Mon, 30 Aug 2004 17:35:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:222564FrankPrDavid: <br>There are techn(olog)ical aspects, and there are economic aspects involved in the decision when to ship Longhorn. The economic ones are clearly primary in this announcement. Remember, Windows XP, the current version, shipped in 2001, and 5 years (to 2006) are an incredibly long time in this industry already. We simply can have people wait even longer before they get the next version. <br> <br>Josh: <br>Yes, we were a little too ambitious in planning to deeply integrate WinFX into Longhorn. This will have to wait a little longer, so the Windows team is probably focusing on incorporating new features into the existing XP codebase. That does not have to be a bad thing per se, since we've got a lot of improvements with SP2. <br>So, why Longhorn? Because, despite the absence of large parts of WinFX, you will see a lot of improvements in security, manageability, user experience, performance, etc. <br> <br>Stefan: <br>Yes, pixel based. Avalon will of course be vector-based, but the Longhorn shell will *not* be based on Avalon in this first release, so it will be pixel-based. (My speculation.) Does this mean it won't be cool? Not at all - look at comparable shells like Mac OS X, e.g. We'll do a lot more in Longhorn.