Windows Vienna coming soon on the heels of Vista?

Saw this bit of information briefly touched on Paul Thurrott's "SuperSite for Windows" and a quick mention on his podcast "Windows Weekly"

Windows "Vienna" (formerly known as Blackcomb) is Microsoft's codename for the successor to Microsoft Windows Vista and "Longhorn Server", originally announced in February 2000, but since subject to major delays and rescheduling.

The code name "Blackcomb" was originally assigned to a version of Windows that was planned to follow Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler"; both named after the Whistler-Blackcomb resort) in both client and server versions. However, in August 2001, the release of Blackcomb was pushed back several years and Vista (originally codenamed "Longhorn", after a bar in the Whistler-Blackcomb resort) was announced as a release between XP and Blackcomb. Since then, the status of Blackcomb has undergone many alterations and PR manipulations, ranging from Blackcomb being scrapped entirely, to becoming a server-only release. In January 2006, Blackcomb was renamed to "Vienna" . Vienna is still planned as both a client and server release with a current release estimate of anytime between 2009-2012.

 

Upcoming client versions of Windows are now being developed by a team run by Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live Engineering. Formerly in charge of Microsoft Office. Vienna will be a relatively minor, or interim, update. Microsoft is currently on a development path where every other Windows version is a major release. Microsoft currently plans to ship Vienna in 2009, about two to two and a half years after Vista. The next major release of Windows is expected two years after Vienna, in 2011.

 

Microsoft has stated that "Vienna" will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit for the client version, in order to ease the industry's transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing. Vienna Server is expected to support only 64-bit server systems. There will be continued backward compatibility with 32-bit applications, but 16-bit Windows and MS-DOS applications will not be supported, as has been the case since the 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

 

 

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