<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. </p><p>Whistler, for those with good memories, was the code name for Windows XP so, as you might expect, this bears more than a slight resemblance to its forerunner. </p><p>Indeed, the code we reviewed included an entry for 'what's new in Windows XP' in the help and support dialogue box. </p><p>Dig deeper, though, and you might start to wonder whether the only common ground is the Start button and task bar, as we reveal in the UK's first extensive review of the operating system we will all be running come 2005. </p><p><b>Easy installation</b> </p><p>Microsoft has worked hard to stem the spiralling install times of its operating systems. You'd be well advised to set aside an hour to load XP onto your system but, in our tests, a fresh install of Longhorn was ready to run in just 20 minutes. </p><p>It requires 3GB of hard disk space to install and, of course, activation. The hard work of convincing the world that this is not a ploy to capture and sell user data or, worse, to use it to monitor our online activities, has been completed, and Microsoft would be ill advised not to capitalise on its success in this area. </p><p>At just over 600MB, the code we tested fits onto one CD, so Microsoft has clearly applied some impressive compression to this release. </p><p>This alpha is copied wholesale onto the hard drive and from that point on you're effectively running a cut-down Longhorn already. </p><p>Installing from a native environment is naturally far more efficient than the piecemeal approach taken by previous editions, and we hope that Microsoft retains this method of installation in the finished product. </p><p>Installing Longhorn is a lights-out operation. Set it running and you can follow the most important on-screen instruction right away: the one that tells you to leave your PC alone for 20 minutes and come back when it's finished. </p><p>After that, a couple of mouse clicks and a single reboot is all that is required. Should you choose not to leave the installation to run on its own, you can sit back and watch a slideshow expounding the benefits of this latest Windows release. </p><p>Finally, the log-on screen has a clock, and partially reverts back to the interface used in pre-XP versions of Windows. </p><p>Instead of a graphical display of registered users it is necessary to Ctrl & Alt & Del and log in manually with both the user name and password through an NT-style dialogue box. </p><p>Systems managers the world over will heave a sigh of relief at this. </p><p><b>The interface</b> </p><p>The first thing you notice about the Longhorn interface is the task pane, called the Sidebar, which runs down the right-hand side of the screen. </p><p>It can be anchored to the left, right or top of the screen, and can even sit under the Start menu. Office XP users will be familiar with this concept: in the world's top-selling office suite it is the place where you return time and again to carry out common tasks. </p><p>In Longhorn, though, it is not merely an activity centre - it is an information portal too. </p><p>The Sidebar is effectively an XML-based aggregator and, although its content is fairly simple at the moment and mostly centred on Windows-related tasks, in theory it could in the future act as a news ticker or weather tracker just as effectively as it can emulate a computer navigation tool. </p><p>Finally, it seems Microsoft may be cottoning on to the idea of RSS (rich site summary) feeds in this release. </p><p>Perhaps this explains why it has not yet made any moves to integrate aggregation facilities into Outlook or Explorer, in spite of the fact that many third-party developers seem to be trying to do just that. </p><p>In its default configuration, the Sidebar takes up around 15 per cent of the available screen space on a 1,024 x 768 monitor, but it can be expanded or contracted to between 10 and 60 per cent of the desktop or minimised to the system tray. </p><p>When minimised it manifests itself as either an expandable icon or a series of buttons that will reinstate individual tiles of the pane in a larger format than their original state. </p><p>This is particularly useful where the task manager is concerned. This keeps track of your three, five or seven most recently used applications, depending on preference, rather like the lower left section of XP's Start menu. </p><p>In this way the 'classic' Longhorn Start menu (of which more in a moment) is considerably simplified; as it won't dynamically rewrite itself each time an application is executed it should be more comprehensible to novice users. </p><p>The Sidebar features a host of other options and shortcuts, all of which can be turned off, minimised, resized or moved up and down the Sidebar's pecking order. </p><p>First off, the quick-launch taskbar, formerly positioned next to the Start menu, has now been rehoused here. One major advantage is that the name of the program appears alongside its icon, but this taskpane does take up more room on the desktop. </p><p>In a similar way to Office XP and 2003's sidebar, Longhorn offers immediate access to Windows' search engine, be it for online resources or files available on your PC or network. </p><p>Resembling a shrunken version of the XP Search menu, it lets you simply type in words or plain English phrases and Windows will search through all available resources. </p><p>There is a slideshow option in the sidebar. This rather frivolous inclusion displays images from whichever directory you choose, taking the My Pictures folder as its default. </p><p>An analogue clock is also available, which can replace the digital version in the bottom right-hand corner. </p><p>System tray icons such as Windows Messenger, activation notifications and even Kazaa can be listed in a separate box. </p><p>Some other features include a separate option detailing user information, though as yet nothing other than the user name appears in this pane, a pane with Media Player controls and a 'Basket' clipboard application. </p><p>Adjusting the properties of any Sidebar pane is done simply through an icon on the outermost top corner of each section. </p><p>The default Start menu is in the style of Windows XP, and is supplemented by shortcuts for My Contacts, Picture and Video Library, and Hardware and Devices. </p><p>Many of the sidebar's features are repeated in the default Start menu. This may cause the majority of sidebar fans to switch to the Longhorn 'classic' style menu, which closely resembles pre-XP releases. </p><p>We suspect that Microsoft may rework the default, XP-style Start menu interface prior to launch to avoid such repetition. </p><p>Active applications appear in the centre of the task bar and expand outwards, rather than lining up from the left. </p><p>This is a matter of personal preference, but we think it looks rather awkward when only a few are running, and much prefer the original configuration which has been with us since the days of Windows 95. </p><p>Multiple instances of the same application will still contract into one task bar position which, when clicked, pops up a menu, allowing you to pick the one you want to access. </p><p>Right-clicking the group gives you the option to tile its members horizontally or vertically, which is great for comparing websites or documents side by side. </p><p><b>The artist within</b> </p><p>The interface goes beyond this layout ideology, though, as Microsoft has effectively rewritten the Windows screen-drawing engine. </p><p>The Desktop Composition Engine (DCE) has been written from the ground up to support wide aspect ratio displays. </p><p>This is a nod in the direction of media use, which implies that Microsoft sees this release as either a melding of both the Media Centre Edition and regular desktop flavours of Windows, or a replacement of the former. </p><p>The DCE, effectively an API (Application Program Interface) codenamed Avalon, radically alters the way in which the operating system draws on-screen data. </p><p>In current versions of Windows, all applications submit their visual output to a single handler within the Windows core, which then assesses what would and wouldn't be visible within the finished product. </p><p>Then it assembles the visible sections to form the completed image on just one desktop layer. </p><p>Naturally it has to do this several times a second to keep the image up-to-date, which explains why you sometimes notice problems when moving around Windows on a visually intensive interface, and why the default for window behaviour on older Windows platforms was for the content to disappear and only the outline to follow your mouse. </p><p>Avalon, though, sees the desktop as a number of layers, just like a Photoshop image. It can therefore distribute active programs onto their own dedicated layer to form a stack of windows. </p><p>As such, even unseen items will exist in this stack regardless of whether or not they are visible on screen. </p><p>This allows for some impressive handling and lets you apply to your application windows the kind of features you'd only find on a skinning site, such as alpha blends. As you might expect, this will be handled by DirectX. </p><p>The pay-off is that you're likely to need some pretty meaty hardware. Indications are that its default interface will be the Aero style, although we'd guess a Plus pack will follow some weeks or months after release, as has been the case with Windows releases of yore. </p><p>Windows can be scaled without becoming blocky or rasterised - think vectors - which is a boon for visually impaired users and, in the style of minimised application icons on the dock in Mac OS X, they can be reduced while remaining 'live', and accurately reflect their contents. </p><p><b>Scratch the surface</b> </p><p>Perhaps the two most revolutionary changes in this operating system are below the surface. The first, codenamed Palladium, controls rights management. The second, WinFS, handles the whole underlying file structure of the operating system. </p><p>Palladium is Microsoft's contribution to the goal of trustworthy computing, and it gives the originators of digital content the ability to control how those products can be used. </p><p>HP is looking to integrate similar functionality into existing versions of Windows and Linux, using its own third-party add-on, but here we see it built into the very fabric of the OS. </p><p>By collaborating with compatible hardware from the likes of Intel and AMD, every file can be invisibly tagged and set to work on only specified machines, or stop working altogether after a set amount of time. </p><p>This allows DVD distributors to produce self-destructing discs, or corporates to write documents that can't be read outside their own network. </p><p>Going beyond that, though, the Trustworthy Computing Initiative can also be used for verification and identification, and, if adopted by online banks or retailers, it should add considerable security to their services. </p><p>Longhorn is the first truly component-based desktop operating system. By this we mean that the base installation is not necessarily a fixed configuration on top of which manufacturers install their own modifications. </p><p>By componentising the OS in this way, Microsoft has given hardware and software vendors the ability to physically replace key sections of the base code to produce truly customised releases. </p><p>As such, it is possible that Longhorn could form the basis of a very powerful media PC, denting the market for either Windows Media Center Edition or the Linux-based alternatives. </p><p><b>Preview: Windows 2005 - Part 2</b></p></div>