Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) has always been a bellwether event for future hardware trends. But last year's show set a precedent that will continue this year--prepping developers, enterprises, and consumers for the many advances in Longhorn, the next major Windows release. To that end, the agenda for WinHEC 2004 won't disappoint attendees who are eager to hear about Longhorn. Microsoft will present a variety of Longhorn-related enhancements, including digital-media advances, portable devices, Media Centers, low-level graphics, and other related technologies.
WinHEC 2004 attendees will receive the alpha Longhorn release--the first such release since Microsoft released a pre-alpha Longhorn build at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 last October in Los Angeles. The new build will feature yet another interim theme, not the advanced Avalon-based UI that Microsoft will likely issue to testers sometime next year. Microsoft will also distribute a new release of the Windows Platform Software Development Kit (SDK), which will help developers get up to speed with the new and updated technologies underlying the new build.
The big news this week will be Microsoft's unveiling of Longhorn's system requirements, which are expected to be far more realistic than any earlier Windows requirements. "We are going to provide some broad guidance to hardware manufacturers about the kind of systems that will be great Longhorn systems," Lead Program Manager Greg Sullivan said. Analysts expect minimum requirements to start with a 4GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM, built-in wireless networking, and a DirectX 9-capable 3D accelerator with at least 128MB of RAM. But the recommended system could be far more powerful; either way, the requirements will likely exceed the capabilities of any PC system that's available today.
Microsoft will also address non-Longhorn matters at the show, which kicks off tomorrow, as usual, with a keynote address by Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin. The company will explain its decision to further delay Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) until late this summer and will likely announce that it has merged the XP SP2 and XP Reloaded projects (Microsoft had planned separate major marketing campaigns around each release). This year, the company is also shipping a suite of digital-media technologies, including a new version of Windows Media Player (WMP) and a new version of Windows XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE), code-named Symphony.
I'll be at the show all week with Keith Furman and Joseph R. Jones and expect to have a lot of interesting news to report. Stay tuned for regular updates.
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the only thing that u need for longhorn is a crazy video card and 1 gig of ram, processors can easily pass at 2.0
damn, i forgot one point. this is an operating system right? is it going to edit videos, music all multimedia apps, paint shop, p2p, messenger, spreadsheet, etc, or do i have to install them separately?
ah yes, of course, install them separately? hell! im keeping my 2d os and install 3d apps if i really need it. and how do we supose we navigate through this new 3d 'gui'? with a joystick i suppose? so instead of buying a new computer, i guess i'll be keeping my old pIII and just plug in another monitor. same function right? wait, and another one... heck, ill get 4 of them huge monitors from ebay.
It is exciting to see Microsoft taking off in this direction with XP. I hope this new OS can hold its own and not crash and I also hope it will have the security features to stop viruses and hacking of its OS. The future looks even brighter for Microsoft and I wish them the best of luck.
microsoft i surely hyping it next release of OS codenamed 'LONGHORN'. any os that requires so much of computing megapower is likely to slowly adopted.
it took more than a year to
adopt windows xp as the core os line; and with the architectural changes of longhorn. it will take at least two to three years to be widely adopted with or without its current specs.
although there are siginficant changes in the programming model. there are no innovative changes and i guess that it will be nothing more than a new theme for windows xp.
Windows Longhorn will require a minimum of 4ghz processor speed, 1gig RAM and 256 dedicated video RAM. The suggested standards are 6ghz processor speed 2gig RAM and 256 dedicated video RAM. Other topics such as FSB and memory MHZ are not yet complete. Also just to comment on all the "longhorn" builds out now, they are not longhorn whatsoever. They are mearlly modified XP and 2000 operating systems. This i know for a fact.
Analysts expect minimum requirements to start with a 4GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM, built-in wireless networking, and a DirectX 9-capable 3D accelerator with at least 128MB of RAM. But the recommended system could be far more powerful; either way, the requirements will likely exceed the capabilities of any PC system that's available today.
Expect to see no mass upgrades to Longhorn in amny organisations then. Rather like Windows XP.
Expect to see no mass upgrades to Longhorn in amny organisations then. Rather like Windows XP.
this is ludicrous. dual core is here and so in 64 bit proccessing. these new techs will definitely end the clock speed race. to prove my point on this matter, an athlon xp 2800+ which only runs at 1.8 ghz is still faster than a pentium 4 at 3.2. even a pentium 3 if overclocked to 1.6 ghz is even way fast. for graphics i would believe it, so is ram, but wireless? havent you heard of stealing broadband access from the wireless modem of your neighbor's internet? absolutely ludicrous. it may come in standard but it shouldnt be required because cables are a proven tech and reliable, hack proof, cheap, and extremely fast. what microsoft should be doing is making a dual processor opteron the basic setup as the standard for longhorn running at only 1.4 ghz as i believe it is more than enough, considering you can overclock opterons to double the stock clock speeds. seriously, after the 1 ghz mark, its the cache and the pipelines and the fsb that counts - NOT the clock speed. if microsoft still insists on putting these demands on the consumers, may i remind everyone that linux operating systems are getting very very popular, in fact i am running win 2k along with 2 linux distros on my pc. and this is a 466 mhz pII with 512 mb ram. works like a breeze. no games of course.
i am a very loyal windows user and will be disappointed if longhorn and xp64 will have the same games on (as is most people's reason for using windows as the mac is still undeniably the best workstation and linux as the best gui server os and for the net and spreadsheets while unix as the best servers overall.)
WINDOWS IS ONLY GOOD FOR GAMES. good work windows for letting us know what future games will need to prepare us.
WITNESS THE FALL OF THE MICROSOFT EMPIRE.
What has me worried about "minimum requirements to start with a 4 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM" is that Microsoft is rather optimistic about the progress in speed of CPUs over the next two years. It seems that CPU speed has gone up by 1GHz since last year and stands at 3.4GHz at this time. We have seen a slow-down in increase of speed, though. The operating system requiring a minimum of 4GHz is troubling because those "lower-end" PCs can cost well above $1,200 when they come out, not even taking into consideration the "normal" PCs that may be out which may cost even more than that. It better be worth it - or maybe Microsoft can lower the price of their OS to drive down cost of the PC? (lol - like that would ever happen)
Right now i am 47% complete in downloading a new distro of Linux.
This is a joke, right. A 4 GHz CPU? A GB of RAM? A DirectX 9-capable 3D accelerator with 128 MB of RAM or more? What business is going to want to shell out the bucks to upgrade all of their computers just to run Lonhorn? This kind of power isn't needed for word processing, spreadsheets or the normal little presentations. Probably only gamers and graphics designers need or want the latest technology.
Built-in wireless networking? I think the analysts are blowing smoke too. Not going to say what they're smoking though.
Linux is looking better and better.
Not being tech savy, how can someone create a peice of software that requires technology not yet invented? Surely whatever they've created and test it on has to be up to the job?
Slowdown in speed increase happens at the end of every processor architecture(P4 Northwood was at its end). Intel just moved Prescott into 90nm, with a longer pipeline. Its got a lot of clock-speed potential. You will see speeds go up pretty fast now.
What?! 4 GHz CPU as the minimum system requirement? I am really shocked about this. I brought one of the higher-end computers (P4 HT 2.8 GHz) that I could afford, but with such system requirements, I guess that Microsoft is thinking a bit too far out. What if 4 GHz CPU chips are not out by 2006? What if this system requirement is way out of the reach for most computer owners in 2006? A more reasonable system requirement will be something like, 2.8 to 3.2 GHz. A GB of RAM, that's fine with me. All I need to do is buy two 512 MB memory cards, which are cheap nowadays. 4 GHz CPU? No way.
"Analysts expect minimum requirements to start with a 4 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM, built-in wireless, and a DirectX 9-capable 3D accelerator with 128 MB of RAM or more."
Now, I am not big on technology and whatnot. But with more power and more capabilies required to operate this hopefully magnificent OS, won't it affect the pricing for the systems on the public floor? I just barely got used seeing desktops for sale at least $1,200. I would sure hate to pay over that amount for a desktop only because it has a Longhorn running the show.
That's funny. 4GHz? 1GB RAM? 128MB graphic? I think I see a relation between these absurd high requirements and the TCPA, right?
Maybe Win XP was the last Windows I ever purchased. And others will think the same too. Playing Offlinegames is boring anyways.
Lol....... I still do a lot of my typing on a 75mhz Pentium-1 laptop, in VGA, with a 850mb disc holding win3.1 and word 6 (office v4, circa 1993). Picked it up for $50 used. Seems to have always been run on AC power..
It works beautifully (not to mention being cool, silent, and hardly bothering the battery). And excel for charting and graphing as well. It's already within a whisker of that magical "speed of thought". Nice simple interface. Loads in under a minute, click on word, excel, or whatever other programs i want (including photo viewer) from the program manager, and off you go... just try not to forget what each 8-character filename means :D
I laugh at this 4Ghz just to run the OS thing. It's just crazy.
What's the point of them fancy graphics again, when you're just trying to compose a letter / email / spreadsheet? Save the chip resources for something truly cycle-hungry like a 100% flash webpage at 1280x1024, or the next generation of games / video editing, etc..
I think the analysts are blowing smoke. Longhorn in Compatability and Aero modes shouldn't require much more CPU power than XP.
In Aero Glass mode, the bulk of the work will be done by the GPU. But the key here is having a CPU capable of keeping the DX9/10 class GPU fed. Besides this, AGP 8x/PCI Express and DDR RAM will likely be necessary for Aero Glass, but not for Aero and Compatability modes. Also, GPUs like the GeForce 6800, which also offloads video decoding could lower the CPU requirements further (keeping in mind that the GPU still needs a CPU powerful enough to keep it fed).
The builds that MS used for demos of Aero Glass weren't running on 4GHz CPUs, and final performance should be much better than the current alpha builds. I think the analysts are latching on to what Bill speculated at PDC would be a common system in 2006 and using that as their guess of the minimum requirements (and once again showing their clulessness). I agree with the GPU and RAM requirements (for Aero Glass) though I think 512 MB of RAM is more likely. Since when is wireless networking a minimum requirement for an OS?
