Longhorn gets a real name (Vista). So why am I not excited?
After what seems to be an eternity, Microsoft is about to put its next operating system out for beta. Perhaps I am becoming jaded but the operating system releases from Microsoft over the years have been more of a relieving of pain from the last one, rather than excitement over new features.
In this preview in PC Magazine, you'll see that Microsoft has gotten a clue from Unix/Linux; users will no longer run under accounts with administrator privileges. Additionally Microsoft is introducing tabbed browsing in IE 7, another take from an existing product (Firefox for one). Obviously there are more changes than these so you need to take a look.
Why do I say "need"? Well despite statements like this from the article linked above...
"It's too early to see how Vista measures up against competitive operating systems, but a lot of the more visible features are familiar. Apple's Mac OS X "Tiger" already has many 3D visual effects and a search interface, Spotlight. Unix has had usable limited-rights accounts for years. But Vista's biggest competitor probably isn't any of these—it's previous versions of Windows. Microsoft needs to make these features more mainstream and make them attractive to developers, while still retaining compatibility with previous versions."...we all know that there is really no competition for the OS and your "enterprise licensing agreement" will help make sure you make the transition to the OS when it comes out.
Actually, there is competition, but it takes a lot of courage to switch an organization to a new OS. I believe it can be done and I'll share my thoughts on how in the near future.