Microsoft Begins Quantifying Longhorn Value

We've all had several years of leaks about the technology of Microsoft's next Windows OS, code-name Longhorn. This week at a partner's conference, Microsoft let the first cat out of the bag regarding why consumers and businesses should rapidly deploy Longhorn -- when it gets here, of course.
Longhorn will:

• launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows does
• boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds
• allow users to patch systems with 50 percent fewer reboots required
  reduce the number of system images required by 50 percent
• enable companies to migrate users 75 percent faster than they can with existing versions of Windows.

Beta 1 is expected in three weeks. Beta 2 will stretch until mid-year 2006. We should have a lottery as to when the actual ship date will occur.