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Primary Reasons to Upgrade to Windows Vista
PDC 2005 suggests Windows Vista is nearly ready for prime time.
by Peter O'Kelly
September 19, 2005
The Windows client operating system now known as Windows Vista, previously code-named the Windows "Longhorn" client and first referenced more than five years ago at PDC 2000, is now close to its beta 2 release. For Microsoft product code name trivial pursuit enthusiasts, incidentally, the Windows client code names at PDC 2000 included "Whistler" for what would become Windows XP and "Blackcomb" for the post-XP release. Longhorn was introduced at PDC 2003, as a product family code name, and Blackcomb was implicitly either revised as a longer-term project or retired as a code name. The next major release of Windows Server still carries the Longhorn code name.
I'll summarize the conceptually daunting amount of Windows Vista information Microsoft presented at PDC 2005. I'll address three key themes in this article: changes en route from Longhorn client to Windows Vista, aspects of Vista that are slated to be ported to "down-level" releases of Windows (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003), and an overview of the reasons why individuals and organizations are likely to find Vista appealing even though many of its key features will also be available on earlier releases of Windows.
The many PDC 2005 keynotes, breakout sessions, and labs included a wide variety of Vista-related topics. A couple Vista details that were not addressed at PDC 2005, however, included pricing/licensing details and precise target schedules. Microsoft continues to follow its "We'll ship it when developers tell us it's ready" policy, but its overall target for Windows Vista is the second half of 2006. Given the stability and scope of the PDC 2005 Vista build, it's likely that won't mean late December 2006. Indeed, to align its timing with the 2006 back-to-school and holiday season, Microsoft may well be targeting a date closer to September than December, but we won't have a good sense of the likely timing until Vista beta 2 is available and analyzed.
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