Bill Gates: 'Longhorn is going to be late'

Bill Gates yesterday confirmed that there is no official release date yet for the next version of Windows, named Longhorn. "Longhorn could be 2005 or 2006," Gates told a small group of journalists yesterday at the TechNet/MSDN seminar in The Hague. "This release is going to be driven by technology, not by a release date. Which probably means it is going to be late."

It is not that Microsoft is on vacation or that it reduced its R&D, Gates explained. "But we have to make sure that we really take on something dramatic, like 32 bit computing eight years ago, or the NT kernel in Windows XP. We also have to solve a ton of things in terms of simplicity and management. It has to be a big advance across the board." One thing that seems to slow down the next release of Windows is the much talked about data storage system WinFS, technology designed to make information easier to find and view. Since it is based on the next version of SQL Server or Yukon, the system will essentially function as a relational database.

Microsoft tried a similar approach with Cairo under Windows NT many years ago, but failed. "We have a lot more understanding of database technology these days," Gates said. "XML is coming in the mainstream and that helps too, but it is still not going to be easy."

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