Longhorn is history - here comes Windows Vista!
Today, Microsoft have officially announced that the next Windows platform, codenamed "Longhorn", will be released as "Windows Vista".
Read more at Microsoft PressPass and at the official Windows Vista website. Actually, this doesn't come as a huge surprise. For example, Microsoft Germany has registered the domain windowsvista.de as early as April 12, 2005. Still, I haven't seen much coverage of it until today. Not bad, Microsoft.
Beta 1 of Windows Long... Vista, primarily targeted at professionals, is announced to be available by August 3, 2005 - in less than two weeks.
What they haven't released to the press is how they are going to abbreviate the product. So, let's make some suggestions: WinV sounds a bit lame (to me, at least) and there is that "opposite-Pentium-4-problem" that might mislead people into thinking about Windows 5, while Vista's major version number is actually 6.
How about WinVS (suggested pronounciation "WinVis")?