The Insider's Guide to Fixing Windows

Future Windows: Windows 2004? The Road to Longhorn

Think Windows XP could stand improvement? So does Microsoft, and the company has begun talking about its next major upgrade. Code-named "Longhorn," this work in progress won't morph into a boxed product until at least late 2004. For now, it's more project than product--an array of ambitious, interlocking ideas foreshadowed in the fusillade of Windows variants and add-ons that will debut in coming months (see the chart to the right).

Longhorn: Long Range

At first blush, Microsoft's long-term goals sound like so much pie in the sky: Windows, says lead product manager Greg Sullivan, should be "as convenient as paper, as simple as television, as connected as a phone." How that translates into specific features is mostly yet to be seen. But Sullivan speaks of a self-maintaining OS where "when you use the software, it modifies and customizes itself, it downloads patches and installs them, and just gets better." XP's Windows Update and Error Reporting tools are two trial balloons in this regard.

XP's digital photography tools and task menus hint at another major theme: helping users find stuff and figure out what to do with it. On this front, Microsoft has said it will replace Windows' aging file system with one based on technology in Yukon, the next edition of the company's SQL Server database. That could drive a smarter, more task-based Windows that could juggle everything from address books to photo albums, wherever they are stored. (However, Microsoft has hyped database-like file systems before without delivering.)

A Webbier Windows

Don't be startled if the next Windows feels a little more like a service (potentially with pay-as-you-go components, Sullivan says). Web-based apps from MSN and from third-party sites, for instance, might be tightly integrated into the Start menu. Tools that build on today's MSN Messenger will probably have a high profile, as well.

The more Webbified Windows becomes, the more you might fret about hackers, viruses, and other Net intrusions. Enter Palladium, another Microsoft initiative, which relies on new Intel and AMD chips to promise Fort Knox-like security. The big question? Whether Palladium will be fully baked in time for Longhorn's release.

One other Longhorn goal is to make Windows more entertaining. "We want to take advantage of the new hardware that's out there now and that will appear in the next couple of years," says Sullivan. Microsoft has already notified graphics vendors that its user interface will want 3D capability and lots of video memory for fancy effects.

It's a safe bet that the next Windows upgrade won't incorporate all the intriguing notions that make up Longhorn. "Some stuff will get dropped as deadlines loom," predicts Paul Thurrott, who tracks Longhorn at his SuperSite for Windows (www.winsupersite.com). Thurrott speculates that we might see a sort of XP Second Edition as a stopgap measure. But some people can't wait: Thurrott's site already has a collection of fake Longhorn "screen shots."