Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

Read more: eWeek.

This is the version of Windows that Gates plans to use to destroy Linux, Mac OS and all other competition.

Its going to contain so much next gen tech that its going to be like a firewall from the heavens. I think, in the end, it will actually take longer to come out even than the article suggests.

Hasn't every release of Windows been described by Gates as the "most revolutionary MS OS to date"

Well, in some sense, some of them have actually been!

Windows 2000 was very impressive when it came out. It left everything that was NT just standing. Maybe Longhorn will do the same thing again. Don't forget that Microsoft atually DO create good products, if measured under certain metrics, etc.

And lets not forget Windows 95, which in many ways was truly revolutionary.

People actually queued up overnight outside stores to buy that.

Don't forget that Microsoft DO SOMETIMES MAKE GOOD SOFTWARE. That's why Bill Gates is the richest man on Earth. That and underhanded business practices.

Hopefully this time they won't be too much bothered about "legacy" code. If this is to be so revolutionary then they need to scrap all that legacy crap.

I would LOVE it if a lot of legacy crap was scrapped.

I would still like the ability to multi-boot with Win9x for backwards compatibility, but we should remove the actual legacy constraints from the next version of Windows so that it can function on its own without the limitations that are kicking around because of legacy constrainsts.