Windows Longhorn Build 5048 Review

Windows Longhorn Build 5048 Review said:

It's been a long year. On May 4, 2004, Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin provided a keynote address at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 (see my show report), during which he demonstrated Longhorn builds 4067 and 4069 and discussed such Longhorn features as Avalon, Indigo, and Aero. The company then provided build 4074 to show goers, and to MSDN subscribers. It looked like Longhorn was finally on track.

Not quite. Unbeknownst to those outside of Microsoft, Longhorn was about to take a major detour. The 4000-series builds that Microsoft had just shown off and handed out had already run their course and were destined for the technological dustbin. The problem, I was told recently, was that the underpinnings of Longhorn--then based on the Windows XP code base--were struggling under the weight of all of the technologies that Microsoft planed to implement in this release.

I'll make available an exclusive write-up about what happened next sometime in June 2005, but for now let's just say that Longhorn's architects went back to the drawing board. The 4000-series builds were scrapped, and the company started building Longhorn again from scratch, using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1, see my preview) code base (as it did for the x64 version of Windows XP (see my preview). The idea is that Longhorn needed to be better componentized from the start, so that the company could offer more discrete versions of the product to customers and more easily add-on the many disparate technologies it was developing. These versions of Longhorn are identified by their 5000-series build numbers.

Late last month, Microsoft finally issued its first public build of Longhorn, build 5048. Also known cryptically as the Longhorn Developer Preview, Longhorn build 5048 was actually created on April 1, 2005 and does not reflect some of the advancements Microsoft has recently made. That was by design: Longhorn build 5048 is designed largely for device driver writers and, as such, does not include many of the user interface niceties we're expect from Longhorn. Furthermore, it actually represents a usability back-step from last year's build 4074. That's because some features, like the Sidebar and the new system-wide Contacts utility, are missing in action in 5048. There are reasons for these omissions. None of them are particularly good.

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Um, you're joking, right?

I have to be honest here. After a year without a single new Longhorn build and very little concrete information about what was going on with the project, I had high expectations for build 5048. And a pre-WinHEC briefing with the software giant did nothing to assuage those hopes. Plus, I've seen advanced Longhorn UI work and I knew how cool this thing was going to be.

Build 5048 communicates none of that. And that's a shame, because Microsoft had a chance to ramp up the momentum of a product that, quite frankly, could use a little momentum. On the one hand, we have Windows XP with SP2, which many people describe as "good enough," a phrase that will haunt Microsoft for years to come as it tries to foist new Windows and Microsoft Office versions on them with decreasing success. On the other hand, I present the competition, Linux and Mac OS X. The Linux market may be convoluted and disjointed, but Linux, too, is "good enough," and it's free, along with "good enough" applications like OpenOffice.org and better Web browsers, like Firefox.

It gets worse. Apple's Mac OS X, recently upgrade to version 10.4 ("Tiger," see my review) is more than "good enough." In many ways, OS X is simply better than Windows, especially for experienced computer users, and Tiger rubs Microsoft's nose in the embarrassment of shipping a key Longhorn feature--instant desktop search--a full year ahead of the software giant. That's right folks. We already knew that Microsoft was facing smaller, nimbler competitors. But those competitors are now starting to outperform Microsoft in the feature department too. It's time for Redmond to stop pretending Linux and OS X don't exist.

Anyway, Longhorn build 5048 is pretty boring. That it's boring by design doesn't make me much happier. I do know that the company will add back major new functionality in time for Beta 1 (currently scheduled for June 30, 2005, but you know how those release dates have a way of slipping) and then again for Beta 2 (a nebulous release that Microsoft will not commit a date to). But sitting here in early May 2005, surveying the state of Longhorn, it's not pretty. Longhorn build 5048 is a disappointment.

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