CNET News is running an article questioning if Longhorn will be a sure hit or a long shot, because of a balance that must be struck between the consumer and corporate worlds. The general opinion is that consumers will generally wait until they must buy a new computer, because the features offered by Longhorn – from an average user’s point of view - do not dictate spending hundreds of dollars on an upgrade; however, the corporate world may see an upgrade simply because of the enhanced security model offered by Longhorn.

Microsoft has been shouting – quite loudly – about Longhorn, but it has been such a long time that I’ve lost almost all interest in the product. For me, I’ll need to see a huge improvement in the area of user interface as well as a serious increase in overall system performance because I’ll be interested in the product as a whole.

However, I’ll still upgrade, if only because the rest of the world will.

When Microsoft chairman Bill Gates touts his company’s next Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, he can barely contain his enthusiasm, adding “it will be super to get that out in the hands of our customers.” The big question is whether customers will share Gates’ enthusiasm more than a year from now.

Speaking at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle on April 25, Gates gave a preview of Longhorn, to be released in late 2006. The preview, demonstrated in a keynote speech by Gates and other executives, showed off security enhancements, a computer “flight data recorder” that can diagnose the reasons for crashes, “rich indexing” that will allow easy searches and previews of the contents of a hard drive, and visual effects such as transparent file folders.

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