Longhorn has already survived several major delays, intense scrutiny from the industry and a radical redesign of its features.
But the toughest test for Microsoft's next release of Windows is still to come: Will anyone buy it?
Even though it will be five years after Windows XP's debut, Microsoft could still face a tough sell when it releases Longhorn next year. With past updates, users had clamoured for more stability and security, but analysts say people are pretty happy with Windows XP.
"Microsoft for the very first time is going to be faced with the challenge of being the player whose [operating system] is 'good enough'" as is, said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg.
The challenge is one Microsoft has tackled for years with its Office software, but it's a relatively new problem for the Windows side of the house.
Microsoft managed to turn the launch of Windows 95 into a major event, with loads of mainstream press and consumer enthusiasm. However, subsequent releases have been considerably more subdued affairs, particularly the launch of Windows XP, which came just a few weeks after the 11 September, 2001. Even with its longest-ever time between OS releases, Gartenberg said, Microsoft will have to work to build demand for Longhorn.
"Microsoft is going to have to find a way to take a page from the Steve Jobs playbook and make an operating system that not only looks interesting, but feels interesting," Gartenberg said.
Longhorn was supposed to achieve the sort of "quantum leap" Microsoft managed with Windows 95. The software maker began talking about Longhorn at a developer conference in the fall of 2003, years before the software would be ready. Microsoft spoke of it as a major advance, to which significant upgrades of other Microsoft software would be tied.
But faced with the prospect of having to further delay the OS, Microsoft decided last year to scale back its key components, and with them, some of Longhorn's ambitions.
The result is that Microsoft is on track to deliver a new version of Windows next year, but it has been unclear about what, exactly, the OS will contain.
Talkback
How many people actually set out to buy XP in the first place? XP was installed by default on most new PCs, and people have bought a lot of PCs in the last 4 years.
I imagine Longhorn will be sold by exactly the same means, and Microsoft will claim it to be a resounding success.
In short. The idea of having your company go through some sort of total migration project once every three, four or five years to then cool things down for several years seems to be a thing of the past. Because now it looks like you'll either wait until all Microsoft phases are proven and keep what you have mostly until then. Or you jump through all the hoops each and every time Microsoft delivers the next phase while running most things in some sort of downwards compatibility mode in the mean time. Or you say bullocks to all that and start looking for lasting alternatives. In other words: there are though decisions to be made. Certainly at the company level.
If companies think that the above is worth a 7.6 on the security scale in favour of Microsoft then they either forget to have a detailed birds eye view over time or they're easily satisfied.
Given that, as usual, the promised benefits of migrating to Microsoft's latest and greatest (just not fully available just yet) are historicly proven never delivered at the very beginning but rather more or less at the end after huge investments have already been made. And it looks like significant time will pass between the first and final (complete) delivery of Longhorn. That way it could easily become a five, six year long total business commitment before the end results are in.
I haven't even upgraded to Svc pack 2 on xp.. why?
DRM and other "Shinanigans" MS is placing in
windows other than "upgrades". Longhorn is going
to be even worse on 3rd party developers etc. and
the era of free use on a PC is coming to an end because of MS. Buy Longhorn... NOT!!
Why use the DiDiot as a quote in any article? It is well known that the "Yankee Group" is a mouthpiece for Microsoft. You might as well say that "an MS PR company said..."
Yankee are about as independant of MS as the Inland Revenue are independant of the taxman!