WinFX To Be Available On Down-Level Windows

Lots of interesting news about the plan to make WinFX available on Windows XP and Windows 2003:

• Press release:  Microsoft Announces 2006 Target Date for Broad Availability Of Windows "Longhorn" Client Operating System
• Note from David Treadwell, the Grand Poobah of WinFX
• Longhorn Developer Center Editor's Note from yours truly
• New Longhorn Developer FAQ section: WinFX on Down-Level Windows
• New WinFS page on the MSDN Data Developer Center

Enjoy.

Basically, "Hooray!"

I could never understand how you could all be working on something so good and so smart, but without allowing me to use it with all the existing customer's install-base.

This is such good news.

Hooray! (again)

My pleasure is diminished somewhat by the news that WinFS is being yanked from the Longhorn client release. And that comment on the WinFS developer site that "WinFS will be available on the Windows platform at some future date" looks really, really vague.
Sigh.

http://www25.brinkster.com/rchildress/postView.aspx?id=97

Great news....but.

The pillars of Longhorn (according to the newly revised site) are Avalon and Indigo.

Q) If both of these pillars are available to WindowsXP and Windows2003 users for free, then what is the compelling reason to upgrade to Longhorn?

The difference between XP and Longhorn was clear prior to the recent news (WinFX, Avalon, WinFS).

Q) Will the Orcas release of Visual Studio run on down-level versions of Windows since WinFX will be available on those platforms or will developers need to run Longhorn to create apps to target XP/2003 WinFX?

Lawrence Pina

I know this sounds like big company evasiveness, but I don't know if we've figured the answers out to those questions (although it's very possible that the smart people know but they don't tell the loud people like me 'cuz I'm likely to tell you : ).

Q) ..."why upgrade to longhorn?"
I don't have a link handy, but I'm pretty sure an overwhelming majority of windows licenses are OEM licenses. So most people get the new version of Windows on a new PC. If you read my post that I linked to above (gee, I don't remember linking to that...), once ISVs take the new features (Avalon and Indigo) and go off and create powerful apps that take advantage of the features then the rest takes care of itself.

Q) "VS Orcas?"
Having to run a longhorn-only development tool to target the previous version of windows seems unthinkable.

but what do I know?

While this all gets sorted out, there's always Xamlon (xaml.com). ;-)

Chris,

Can we expect the WinFX beta for XP & 2003 to ship when Longhorn beta ships or will they be independent ?


.Asher.

http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=771a442d-7037-4124-bbbf-98537c240a69

After reading the newsgroups and the web, the overwhelming opinion seems to be that making Avalon and as much of the rest of WinFX available on WinXP and Win2003 is fabulous, but some folks are really mourning the delay of WinFS.

At http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/03/36NNlonghorn_1.html there is the following quote from MS lead product manager Greg Sullivan: "'In 2006, if I am running Longhorn on my machine and you’re running XP with Avalon and Indigo on yours, you’re going to look at my machine, and you will want mine,' he said." So if Avalon and Indigo will be slow and/or ugly and/or buggy on XP, who will want them? This announcement of WinFX availability on XP seems to me not to inspire joyous dancing in the street.