Microsoft offers peek at Longhorn

The company demonstrated a new XML-based document format, code-named "Metro", that it will use in Longhorn to both print and share documents. Printers that build in Metro support will be able to more quickly and faithfully render documents created in Longhorn, while users will be able to share files without needing the application that created them, Microsoft said.

The document format is likely to go head-to-head with today's most popular document-reading method, Adobe's PDF format. Microsoft's announcement "should have a lot of folks at Adobe worrying", Doherty said.

But it also represents an "all or nothing" bet for Microsoft, Doherty said, in which Microsoft is attempting to displace a well-established competitor. "It's a big gamble," he said.

Among other features Gates discussed was the ability of PCs running Longhorn to take advantage of storage that combines traditional hard drives and non-volatile flash memory. By using flash for frequently accessed information, laptop PCs will be able to get much better battery life given that substantially less power is used accessing flash than is needed to spin a hard drive.

Also, he said, Longhorn will come in a single binary for all the different language editions. Apple has done that in Mac OS X, but it's a first for Windows.

Mac fans will find continued similarities in Microsoft's changes. In Longhorn, the folder that was once "My Documents" will become simply "Documents," While "My Photos" and "My Videos" will become "Photos" and "Videos." Clicking on a document icon will bring up a preview pane with added information about the file, also a feature in Mac OS X. In addition, searching and virtual folder features are similar to what Apple has done with Tiger, the new version of the Mac OS that goes on sale on Friday.

But Gates said Microsoft is doing more than just improving search, noting the capability to organise files across multiple characteristics, such as sorting documents "created by brutus" into various categories based on keywords. Longhorn users will also be able to group a collection of files into a list that can be shared with many users, even automatically using an updated version of RSS.

In addition to previewing Longhorn, Gates presided over the official launch of the 64-bit versions of Windows and showed off several futuristic laptop PCs. One demo, a futuristic tablet PC that would be as thin as 10 sheets of paper, turned out to be little more than a mock-up. Gates acknowledged that significant hardware and software advances were still needed, but said a 1-pound, 6-inch device that combines all the power of a PC, phone and camera for around $800 is still possible a couple of years from now.

"We do believe this is achievable," Gates said.

Gates projected that while it took until 2002 — two decades — for the industry to sell its 1 billionth PC, the 2 billion mark would be hit in just six years, by 2008.

"Compared to 6 billion people on the planet, 2 billion is starting to get somewhere," Gates said.

The software maker also announced it has continued to see a rise in sales of PCs with its Windows XP Media Centre operating system. The company said it has now logged about 1 million new shipments since the latest iteration of the software began showing up on PCs last October. That's the same number sold for all prior versions of the OS, dating back to 2002.

"It's quite a good ramp," Gates said, adding that the current rate of sales is more like 500,000 Media Centre shipments per quarter.