<div align="justify"><p>Supposedly named after a saloon bar at the foot of the Whistler mountains, Longhorn will be the next desktop release of Windows. We conclude the first extensive UK preview of the operating system with our verdict on its performace. </p><p><b>Organising your work</b> </p><p>WinFS is Windows Future Storage. As a database-driven, centralised repository of information, it will change the way we think about our files and how they are organised. In all existing operating systems our work is saved in the context of the application in which it was created. Our emails, for example, are stored in an email application. Our spreadsheets use a completely different file format and are most likely saved loose on the hard drive. </p><p>Turning this on its head, WinFS creates a central information repository into which all files - regardless of type or originating application - are saved, allowing you to make system-wide searches that will gather information from the whole database. </p><p>For example, a search for 'subscriptions to PCW in January', would show a result list containing spreadsheets of existing subscribers, emails from new subscribers and letters sent to or from subscribers, among other resources. </p><p>At heart this is SQL-based, and indications are that WinFS will work only on top of the NTFS file structure. </p><p>In a move that apes decades-old Unix conventions, WinFS looks set to do away with drive letters, reducing your drives to simple resources used for storing data. </p><p>How users will feel about not necessarily knowing where their data is held remains to be seen, but, if nothing else, it will certainly force us to think along the Microsoft corporate lines. </p><p>To date we have tested two Longhorn builds: 4008 and 4015. Only the latter used the WinFS architecture. </p><p>It therefore enables the sidebar pane option for searching across all data regardless of location; locally or on connected resources. Less emphasis will also be placed on folders and file locations thanks to this improved search technology, but Microsoft has nonetheless improved navigation. </p><p>A breadcrumb trail now follows your progress through several parts of the file system. This works rather like the 'back' dropdown menu on a browser, and therefore allows you to quickly jump to an earlier location without successive clicks of the back button. </p><p><b>Open and close</b> </p><p>Whereas Microsoft introduced the idea of optionally arranging the file dialogue by letter or type in XP, this function was hidden in a menu of the file window dialogue. In Longhorn it has been brought to the fore, with indexed hyperlinks in three sections for jumping to files that meet specific criteria, based on name, dimension or location. </p><p>If you know you're looking for a file that starts with the letter A in a folder called 'pcw' you could therefore restrict your searches to all folders starting with P with one mouse click. </p><p>A similar dialogue is used for saving files, and Windows will keep track of where you have recently placed files so it can present quick links to those folders at the top of the Save dialogue. </p><p><b>Media</b> </p><p>With Apple making great strides in establishing itself as the de facto choice for anyone serious about digital leisure through its Ipod and Ilife suite, Microsoft clearly sees this as a key battleground. </p><p>It is therefore fighting its corner with improvements to the way it files our digital media. </p><p>Image searches can now take advantage of meta data, set either by the camera or user, so if you remember you took a particular image with your Kodak, not your Nikon, you can specify that this should be one of the terms with which the search results comply. </p><p>Likewise, music files, now stored in the Music Library, can be organised by genre and by artist and album. </p><p>This brings the kind of functionality we have seen for some time in Musicmatch, Winamp and other media players into the core of the operating system. </p><p>It is also possible to record direct from a DV camcorder to a DVD disc, regardless of the destination media type and without the footage ever touching the hard drive. </p><p>Of course, you'd be advised to edit your shots first and, while the Longhorn release reviewed here doesn't include any specific video-editing application, we find it hard to believe a new release of Movie Maker won't be bundled. </p><p>Whether there are any plans to integrate DVD menu creation functionality we can't say at this time, but watch for updates as and when we uncover more details. </p><p>Pictures and videos are now stored in a Library that is accessible from the Start menu, making all such data far easier to access. </p><p>The Picture Viewer has been considerably improved over the XP edition. As before, it will rotate, zoom and display images as a slideshow, as well as printing the ones you deem suitable. </p><p>New features in Longhorn now build on this to provide the ability to correct exposures, remove red-eye, crop the image, select all faces and even close down the view and load the image in an alternate editing application, chosen from a pop-up menu on the button. Furthermore, the picture's meta data can be accessed and edited through the viewer itself. </p><p><b>Bang for buck</b> </p><p>Our review installation was noticeably slim on new content. While we had a fully functional operating system, we didn't have all the associated paraphernalia we've come to expect in a Windows install. </p><p>However, this kind of 'window dressing' tends to be the final thing that is added to the package. There are a few pointers that reveal how Microsoft is thinking though. </p><p>At the top of the Start menu is a clear entry for 'set program access and defaults', which opens a pane of the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs dialogue for specifying default applications for web browsing, email, media playback and Java control. </p><p>This is of course down to the outcome of the US Department of Justice Anti-Trust trial, and is far more obvious than the same feature in previous releases or service pack upgrades. </p><p>It contains options for Microsoft, non-Microsoft, computer manufacturer or Custom settings.
Interestingly, in our early release the non-Microsoft browser option was Internet Explorer, while the non-Microsoft email client was Outlook. </p><p><b>Performance</b> </p><p>Performance on our Athlon 1800+ test system with 128MB of memory was incredibly slow, though this is to be expected for such early alpha code. </p><p>Opening up basic programs such as Paint and Solitaire took over 15 seconds, and reboot times were almost twice as long as those on Windows XP. </p><p>Further, Windows Explorer runs incredibly slowly on this release. </p><p>However, by the time Longhorn reaches the market, even Pentium 4s will be considered outmoded, so we have no way of determining what the performance of the finished product on the recommended platform will be. </p><p><b>So when?</b> </p><p>Longhorn was initially rumoured to be arriving in 2002 but, as has happened with previous OS releases from Microsoft, has since been pushed back several times. </p><p>Nobody knows for sure the exact date when we're likely to be junking our XP installations in favour of this new release - or even what it will be called. </p><p>All we can say for sure is that it won't be called Longhorn (Windows 2005 is speculation on our part), it will be a desktop-only product, and the chances are we'll be seeing it in the shops some time in 2005. </p><p>If you're wondering, reports from the US indicate that the much-hyped product being developed under the codename Blackcomb will be the next server-based version of Windows, and will not run on desktop machines. </p><p>As you'll have seen over the past five pages, Longhorn is a far more substantial upgrade than anyone ever suspected. </p><p>Also, thanks to several delays in bringing the product to market, it now incorporates technology originally intended for use only in Blackcomb. </p><p>A case in point is WinFS, which has flip-flopped between the two releases depending on anticipated shipping dates. </p><p>So Longhorn is a big deal for Microsoft. It claimed it was betting the ranch on XP but in reality its advice to corporates was to stick with 2000 until they felt ready to make the switch. </p><p>The strategy with Longhorn is more likely to be one of pushing for a global upgrade as soon as possible, and as such it is perhaps the most important version of Windows ever. </p><p>Speaking at Winhec in May, Phil Poole, Microsoft's senior vice-president of the Windows Platform Group, talked of "life immersion": melding products so seamlessly into the user's life that they had no choice but to upgrade. </p><p>"We haven't immersed the technology into their lives as well as we could and we haven't asked them to immerse their lives into the technology as well as could be done either," he said. </p><p>That, then, is Microsoft's task for the next two years - to convince us that our business and personal lives will so depend on this upgrade that we will not be able to live without it. </p><p>You can expect this to be just the start of a sustained Longhorn awareness campaign. </p><p><b>Preview: Windows 2005 - Part 1</b> </p></div>