Tags: Microsoft

Windows Vista: First Beta to arrive today

Microsoft is expected to release the first beta of their next generation operating system codenamed Longhorn today. The company just recently unveiled that this version of their OS would be publicly known as Windows Vista though, the company is likely to face a trademark infringement case on the name, which is owned by another company based in Redmond.

The first beta of Longhorn is not expected to showcase the graphical enhancement of the upcoming Operating System from the company. It is however expected to reflect key changes that Microsoft is making under the hood of its flagship operating system. The company is not releasing this beta as a public release and instead limiting it to developers and technical audiences.

The official launch in the MSDN community is however scheduled for August 3. The company is due to release a much closer version to the final edition sometime later this year with the aim to release the retail version sometime during the next year’s holiday shopping season. The company has already come a long way since the preview version Bill Gates showed to the world way back in 2003.

Some of the highlights of this latest version of a Windows Operating System would be inclusion of technologies like Indigo, Avalon, and WinFS. WinFS is something, which is expected to enhance the file storage mechanism though the company has warned that it might not ship with the initial launch of the Operating System and might appear at a later stage.