Opinion of Windows Longhorn?

[Som]

Yes, actually. The following image shows Disc 1 of a pre-release version of Longhorn distributed at PDC 2003. Disc 2 is of an orange color.

oh none of my copies where "legal" per se :p

[Dot Matrix]

As much as I followed Longhorn, I was never able to personally try out any of the builds, but the most visually appealing to me were the Plex and Slate builds.

[slumdogtrillionaire]

longhorn development were amaziing times! i wodner why the team was fired and replaced? that was the best team really.. had MS given them an extra year or two would have been better than bring in Jim allchin and have vista flop and then windows 8 flop too. but yea hindsight is always 20/20.

[ATLien_0]

Didn't Longhorn also get rebooted partly because of the Windows XP security issues and getting SP2 out the door. I think Longhorn was an ambitious OS for Microsoft at that time, I think then they were just starting to grasp true UI design, from a design perspective. In fact I think Longhorn was a little ahead of their time. If you look at where Microsoft is now, I think they could have pulled it off. Though look now, the whole sidebar concept and gadgets are now gone in favor of the start screen tiles

[+Warwagon MVC]

Who remembers "Watercolor"? :p

Who doesn't remember water color?

The reason Longhorn failed and they started over is because they tried to build the whole thing out of the dotnet framework and it collapsed on itself.

[Robbie Ride]

I liked the UI in Longhorn and one of the things that I wanted to see was the moving icons, i.e. (music icon in the video show it twisting and fluctuating.)

But if it wasn't for feature creep and time limitations we may have ended up with an os better than Vista but who's to say how it would have ended up.

[Dot Matrix]

Longhorn was rebooted partially because they abandoned the Xp codebase, for a more stable Server codebase, and because of feature creep.

[fusi0n]

4074 ran like crap for me.. I had major issues with that build.. I had to unplug/plug my mouse and keyboard every time I powered on/rebooted.. those where the days..

[cropcircles]

Loaded up Longhorn 5048 not to long ago on Virtualbox and messed with it. Other then it being really slow it was still the most exciting OS release. People just went nuts when new builds came out.

[Ian W]

longhorn development were amaziing times! i wodner why the team was fired and replaced? that was the best team really.. had MS given them an extra year or two would have been better than bring in Jim allchin and have vista flop and then windows 8 flop too. but yea hindsight is always 20/20.

I'm not sure why some think that the team was fired (and/or replaced). Jim Allchin himself was the head of Windows development; a position he retained after the "reset" of Longhorn. Resetting the project was his decision, for reasons mentioned in the article I shared.

"It's not going to work," Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly.

The news got even worse: Longhorn was irredeemable because Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.

It's more than unfortunate. I'm sure they could have added many more of the original ideas into Windows Vista if it wasn't for that self-imposed 2006 deadline.

[REM2000]

i would have loved to see WinFS implemented, as i still feel that Windows search even in 8 is not quite up to scratch, mine frequently misses files. Shame it was a little too ambitious

[brother_van]

Does anyone know of any "Plex" themes for Windows 7?

I found this theme on Deviantart, but It is for Vista. Will Vista themes work on Windows 7?

[Dot Matrix]

Does anyone know of any "Plex" themes for Windows 7?

I found this theme on Deviantart, but It is for Vista. Will Vista themes work on Windows 7?

No, Vista themes, will only work with Vista. But, searching DeviantArt produced a plethora of Windows 7 compatible themes. Here you go: http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/windows7/visualstyle/?q=Longhorn :)

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

This one is a beauitful Longhorn UI!

This one is WIndows 7-esque with the flat taskbar

[Dot Matrix]

Build 3683 still had the best theme, if you ask me. I really liked the taskbar and start menu of this build. Nicely flat and squared off.

[123456789A]

I remember being very excited about Longhorn, but in the end I think it was just too ambitious for a small business like Microsoft to take on.

[Tuishimi]

Longhorn turned my attention back to Microsoft because it showed to me that at least they were thinking about change and about incorporating different concepts in the operating system... I was a Mac user at that point. I started following what MS was doing again at that point... When Win 7 beta came out I switched and have been using Windows since.

[edit]

Mind you I continued to use FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Ubuntu until Win 7 arrived.

[brother_van]

No, Vista themes, will only work with Vista. But, searching DeviantArt produced a plethora of Windows 7 compatible themes. Here you go: http://browse.devian...yle/?q=Longhorn :)

Thanks for the link, but I was unable to find any with the Plex style. It seems that all of these Longhorn themes are based on Aero.

Build 3683 still had the best theme, if you ask me. I really liked the taskbar and start menu of this build. Nicely flat and squared off.

I concur, that's the theme I am trying to find for Windows 7. I can't believe it hasn't been made.

[Ian W]

This one is WIndows 7-esque with the flat taskbar

I wonder if the wallpaper in this image even exists.

[Yuhong Bao]

Who remembers "Watercolor"? :p

Yea, the Office XP UI style was based on Watercolor, because Luna was kept secret by the Windows team and Office XP was actually released before Windows XP. It took until Office 2003 for this to be finally fixed.

[Gnome]

Remember what really happened there - the original Longhorn builds pre-5xxx were based off from Windows XP.

Then 5xxx and after were based off from Windows Server 2003, a far more stable OS than XP (I know, I know - it's a server OS, but still).

So, a reboot was necessary though.

^ This

Longhorn had great ideas but the performance/stability was horrible. They had to scrap it and build something with a more solid base. Unfortunately, with time constraints and a reboot after years of development, they weren't able to put together a solid platform by the time it went gold.

The end result was a decent OS that was missing 2/3 of the new features that were promised. Then, OEMs put it on underpowered machines with bloatware and didn't bother updating their drivers, thereby ruining the experience for everyone. When you look at Windows 7, it finally incorporates most of the things that were supposed to be in Vista.