According to Ballmer, Longhorn will definitely be released in 2006. Well, that is fine for those of you who are finding that XP is not working for you. So far, I have not heard anything about Longhorn that would cause me to trade in my XP install for it. Back when Microsoft was going to use the WinFS, I was impressed by what I heard about it. But it’s decided to remove that from the drawing board. I will wait to see what the initial reports are before I get too excited about this new version of Windows, I think.

At the Microsoft TechNet/MSDN Briefings in The Hague today, keynote speaker Steve Ballmer insisted that Longhorn will [definitely] be released in 2006. However, he admitted jokingly that it will probably end up being “around December 31, 2006,” acknowledging that the schedule is very tight. A 2006 release date for the desktop and notebook versions was announced in Microsoft’s Longhorn road map in August, and [it] seem[s] committed to sticking to that deadline.