Thank you. Well, welcome to the "Longhorn" PDC. We've been looking forward to this event for a long time.
Over the last four years Microsoft's R&D budget has more than doubled, and that budget is focused on the things you're going to hear about today. It's focused on making "Longhorn" real, and all the milestones that get us to that point.
This is going to be a very big release — the biggest release of this decade, the biggest since Windows 95.
2004
In a press release dated 27 August, 2004, Bill Gates refers to 2006 as a target date for the release of Windows Longhorn. In the press release a host of new feature monikers were detailed and began to become more familiar: WinFS, WinFX, Avalon, and Indigo. Here is an excerpt attributed to Gates:
Getting "Longhorn" to customers in 2006 will provide important advances in performance, security and reliability, and will help accelerate the creation of exciting new applications by developers across the industry.
2005
On July 21, 2005, at the Microsoft Global Business Conference (MGB) in Atlanta, Microsoft announced that the new operating system's official name was to be Windows Vista. A video of that event is linked to in the press release. Less than a week later, on 27 July, Windows Vista Beta 1 began reaching the hands of testers.
Conclusion
While the first half of 2007 seems like a long time to wait for the release of Windows Vista, it's really a small chunk of time when you step back and realise how long we've actually been waiting for this new operating system. Of course, I've only highlighted a few of the events along the way, but each one of these events clearly highlights the path of anticipation as we prepare to receive Beta 2.
