Microsoft Makes Longhorn Performance Promises

For the past several years, Microsoft has been promising that Longhorn would deliver some substantial security, reliability and performance improvements. But until the worldwide partner conference in Minneapolis in mid-July, company officials had not quantified the benefits that Longhorn — the version of the Windows client operating system, due in 2006 — would deliver.

Amy Stephan, a senior product manager with the Windows client unit, outlined some of the various Longhorn "fundamentals," including systems management and deployment features, which Microsoft is readying. Stephan told conference attendees that Longhorn will:

• Launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows XP does.

• Boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds.

• Allow users to patch systems with 50 percent fewer reboots required.

• Reduce the number of system images required by 50 percent.

• Enable companies to migrate users 75 percent faster than they can with existing versions of Windows.