Waiting for Windows

By Jerry Pournelle

May 16, 2005

(Waiting for Windows :  Page 1 of 1 )

Column 298

We're just back from the 2005 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC 2005) with great news about Longhorn, the Operating System of the Future: "My Documents" will go away, to be replaced by "Documents."

Even better, icons will no longer be static. We'll have Dynamic Icons!

Well, all right, that wasn't the only news; but it was a major headline item during the opening keynote speech, which should tell you something, given that we've been waiting for the Operating System of the Future for four years and more now. (The other news: Bill Gates insists he never, ever, said that 640 K would be enough for anyone. We heard him deny it. And, I must add, I was around in those days, and I certainly never heard him say anything like that.)

WinHEC 2005

There are two essential Microsoft conferences for Windows applications developers. One, Professional Developer Conference (PDC) generally happens every other year; the next PDC will take place September 13-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There are pre-conference events September 11 and 12. I don't know what parts of Longhorn will be released there. Something significant usually is.

The other essential conference is the annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, WinHEC. They usually release something significant at WinHEC. This year we got Longhorn Developer Preview Discs—the full beta wasn't ready—and the 64-bit Edition of Windows 2003 Server. That latter is pretty cool, and I'll have it running here in a month or so. If you're going to migrate to Server 2003, this may be the right way, assuming the driver developers do their stuff on time. That may be an invalid assumption. We will see.

We expected a lot about Longhorn. After all, WinHEC is where you get the gory details of how new Microsoft OS features will work, and how they hook into the hardware.

In former years we also got a presentation on the future of hardware.

 Page 1 of 1