Paul Thurott reports the Longhorn Beta 1, a developer release, slipped to late July, but screenshots of build 5203 appear to be available (yawn!) and invitations to beta testers have already been sent out. Paul maintains that feature-complete Longhorn Beta 2 will still be released on Nov 2005; most other reports indicate early next year. Beta 2 will have a new user interface called Project M. (The name reminds me of the Project X desktop UI, which Bill Gates demoed at Comdex in the mid-90s, but which never materialized.)
A lot more noise about Longhorn have been dripping in the past few weeks. In anticipation of the summer beta, the August issue of PC Magazine already has a review of build 5048 of Longhorn with some nice pictures of the explorer. (WinSupersite had a review for awhile of that build .) Pro-Networks is maintaining a list of new recent news items.
I REALLY hope that these screens have nothing to do with the REAL UI stuff microsoft is coming out with. These screens are HORRIBLE!
Posted by: Alex | July 12, 2005 at 07:22 AM
As Paul said, Beta 2 will be feature complete and I believe we can expect the new UI in beta2, not before... what you see now is NOT what you will get.. ;)
Posted by: Andrej Budja | July 13, 2005 at 02:41 AM