News Will Longhorn's Loss Be Your Gain?

With the news that Redmond has taken the shears to the shaggy dog story that is Longhorn, PCWorld reports on the fact that users may have more to gain with the OS surgery than they loose out on:

Microsoft's retreat from its Longhorn ambitions and its decision to add several Longhorn technologies to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 may rob the next Windows release of its glamour, but users and developers gain more than they lose, some observers say.

The next Windows release will ship in 2006, but without the WinFS unified storage system, Microsoft said last week.

WinFS is one of the three key components of Longhorn that Microsoft had hyped. It uses relational engine technology and promises to make it easier for users to find related files, documents, and e-mail messages on their computers and on corporate networks. Microsoft now plans to deliver WinFS, which is based on technology from its forthcoming SQL Server 2005 database, as an operating system update after the Longhorn release.

More here

 

excellent, now less space the next gen winblows will whore on my Harddrive

 

WinFS sounds like something that if it was optional to install I wouldn't bother.
I do about one search a month using windows search and it currently does the job fine.

 

still to have waited soo long it's not nice to hear their getting rid of some of the main features they touted... even if they are coming later on...

 

There's nothing to worry about that feature is just mealure like a search engine, I mean who here doesn't know their own computer well enough to find folders easily, well I know I definately do.

 

So do I, but I know plenty of people know don't (my boss mainly )

I s'pose that when you receive/send 100+ emails a day from a dozen different projects, most with several attachments of frequently updated documents, easier searching might be useful.

 

Um - so whats the big gain?

 

This sounds like a more annoying feature than ever... I can barely read an NTFS drive on my linux box as it is, so this is just one more thing to tie you to Microsoft...

For that matter... has anyone tried XP's partitioning system (Dynamic volumes, I think it's called)? I don't dare risk it - it looks far too much like I'd not be able to read the drive in any other system afterwards, and I bet it's a one way conversion.

 

From the article:

Essentially, you'll see things that where supposed to debut in Longhorn like Avalon (The graphics sub-system) and Indigo (The comms subsystem) in things like XP and Server 2k3 - Possibly before Longhorn is put out to pastur... I mean released.

 

great. now Virus's can wipe out ALL of outlook, rather than just the odd e-mail or 50.

Popup Malware can create pop-up every time you open ANY file.

Ad-ware can report every type of website you go to.

why worry about getting a trojan in just one or two .exe's Micorosofts New FS will allow them to infect *.exe with one nativly suported Function call.

it will also sleep with your dog, alienate your relatives, drink all your beer, and donate all of your money to the bill gates retirement fund.

 

Huh? Wtf are you talking about?

 

Thank god that wasn't included. That's based on databases, and we all know how fast and stable a database the size of a hard drive is. Like DaSuperFly said, if it was an option, I wouldn't even install it. Seriously, who comes up with this crap? I was fine with the Mac OS7-X file system of HFS+. I like it, it works, it's fast, and it doesn't become continually bogged down. Yay for innovation!

 

I want the 3d GUI thing. I couldnt care less about the winfs but i want the GUI!

 

Sounds like a fancy replacement for the F3 key (search).

TMM... Longhorn's system requirements look to include a 1TB hard drive... so even if that gets pushed back to 800GB big difference.

 

please tell me your joking.

what the hell could possibly require 1TB

 

Well... It would require a 1tb hd if it HAD over million lines of BUGGY CODE!

 

AFAIK MS are releasing Avalon & Indigo for XP too so who's going to want/need to update to Longhorn with all the top features being available for XP?

 

Hey guys, remember all the mess about MS and authorities putting hardware/software on your system that sends data to them? What do you think the odds are that this WinFS would have functions built-in to look for movie and music files... and find related files... ?

 

I doubt it very much

what is more likely is more stupid restrictions like not being able to play a non-copyrighted music file or some other nonsense.

 

sounds like they are just rushing to get the big features out in time to compete with the next version of os X. watching apples keynote speech in june you see a lot of the stuff windows is touting for longhorn being available for tiger which ships in 05.

*note - i'm not looking to spark a mac windows debate this is just my speculation.