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Gates Shows Off Features of Next-Generation Windows System

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 April 2005, 00:00 CDT

Apr. 26--SEATTLE -- The future of personal computing includes flashy graphics, powerful search capabilities plus security, security, security, Bill Gates said Monday as he began to give details of Microsoft's next-generation Windows operating system known as Longhorn.

The operating system will have a new, three-dimensional look, including translucent pages enabling users to see documents layered upon each other. A search function will exist at the bottom of the "Start" menu and users will have the ability to look for documents, photos and music across their hard drive, e-mail, Internet sites and even other PCs.

Speaking at a Windows hardware conference, the Microsoft chairman Gates showed off features of the long-awaited Longhorn, expected to hit stores in late 2006. The preview by the Redmond, Wash. software giant came just four days before Apple was set to release Tiger, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system. Tiger also has new search tools.

Gates talked up the benefits of 64-bit computer chip technology that Longhorn is designed to take advantage of.

And he underlined the importance of security for the world's largest software maker, which has been plagued in recent years by numerous security flaws in Windows, which runs 95 percent of the world's PCs.

"If you had to take one area where we put the most investment in, the security area would be the head of that list by a significant amount," he told about 3,000 engineers .

That may be the most critical message Microsoft gives to the computing world, now under incessant siege from destructive viruses and other bugs, said Greg DeMichillie, senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent research organization.

Gates said he believed Longhorn will create a stir similar to Windows 95, which landed in stores just as the Internet exploded in the mid-1990s. Microsoft is betting on Longhorn to help extend its dominance of personal computing, built around its Windows franchise that turns 20 this year.

Microsoft will have to make a stellar sales pitch to convince companies and consumers that their lives will be more complete with Longhorn. Indeed, Gates said the company he co-founded will spend more money on marketing on the next-generation of Windows than any other Microsoft product.

"Longhorn is our big investment," Gates said. "This is the decade where we can have the most impact of all," he said, pointing to "the pervasiveness of digital approaches" to business, entertainment and other activities.

The foundation to make all of this happen is 64-bit chip technology, which is not yet widely used. Sixty-four bit chips process data in chunks twice the size of 32-bit chips, the standard for most PCs today.

The company on Monday said it is shipping new versions of its existing products designed for 64-bit computing. The Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64 upgrades are for computers running 64-bit microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. These latest versions of software can handle significantly more memory but also work with software designed for 32-bit technology.

Perhaps the most far-reaching capability of Longhorn is its "Indigo" technology for creating Web services, observed Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Goldman, Sachs, which provides banking services to Microsoft.

"The next wave in computing is the development of Web services standards. When Longhorn is available, you probably will have within a year or two hundreds of Web services on the market," said Sherlund.

Windows 95 benefited from the explosion of the Internet, said DeMichilllie. "There is not another Internet coming along that will get 100 million people to go out and buy PCs," DeMichillie added.

Microsoft also announced that it had hired Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at International Paper, to become its next CFO, starting May 9. Liddell will replace John Connors, who left in January to join a venture capital firm in Seattle.

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MSFT,

Source: San Jose Mercury News

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