FAQ on Longhorn

Today as i was browising the sites, i got some FAQ on Longhorn

 

What is Longhorn?
Longhorn is the code name for the next version of Windows. A server version of Longhorn is also planned.

Why the name longhorn?
It's a type of steer. It's also the name of a bar at the base of British Columbia's Whistler mountain, on the way to Blackcomb. Whistler was the code name for Windows XP, while Blackcomb was the moniker for a version of Windows that was originally scheduled to follow Whistler.

When will Longhorn arrive?
Microsoft has promised that Longhorn will be widely available on computers for the 2006 holiday buying season. A beta or test, version is planned for "early summer," probably June or July. The server version is slated for 2007.

So what's in this Longhorn thing?
Longhorn has evolved quite a bit since Microsoft first demonstrated an early version in 2003. The company has dropped plans to include its all-new WinFS file system and has also changed the way it's implementing a new Web services architecture, known as Indigo, and a new graphics engine, dubbed Avalon.

Among the key features of Longhorn as it currently stands are: security enhancements, a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, Microsoft said Longhorn will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.

Is that all?
No. Among the other features Microsoft has publicly confirmed are: broad IPv6 support, improved client-side caching of data stored on a server, whole-volume encryption, a revamped synchronization engine, the ability to support laptops with an auxiliary display, automatic hard drive optimization and a secure boot-up process that helps prevent someone from gaining access to your data if your PC is lost or stolen. There's also probably a ton of stuff we haven't heard about yet.

Is everything final?
No. Allchin has said that getting Longhorn out on time is more of a priority than including every last feature. So if the team hits a stumbling block, some features could be on the chopping block.

Will Longhorn be called Longhorn?
No, Microsoft will give it some official name, probably around the time it goes into beta, according to Allchin.

 Will my PC run Longhorn?
That depends on how recently you bought it. Allchin said in an April interview that he expects Longhorn will need about 512MB of memory and "today's level" of processor. The ability to display all the fancy new graphics will depend on what type of graphics card one has. On some older machines, the graphics may look similar to today's Windows.

Will it come in the same editions as in the past--Home, Professional, Tablet and Media Center?
Allchin said Microsoft is close to a decision there, but not ready to talk about it. "We are moving features around," he said.

How much will it cost?
Pricing, too, is yet to be decided

I got to know that Microsoft is expecting seven editions of Longhorn targeting each users.

WBMTest.exe - WMI Tester

As i was browsing through the internet, I got to know about a hidden tool that works like a WMI Tester. Name of the utility is wbmtest.exe which can be run by start- run and executing wbmtest.exe. For more info about it, you can visit a link below

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Logon/WBMTEST.htm

Introduction to Visual Studio 2005

                             Introduction to Visual Studio 2005

 

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 is a major new release of the comprehensive development environment for building Microsoft .NET.connected applications for Microsoft Windows® and the Web. This new version offers the following primary advantages: 

 

·         Radically improved developer productivity. Visual Studio 2005 contains integrated development environments (IDEs) for Microsoft Visual Basic®, Microsoft Visual C#®, and other programming languages, which include many features that make it faster and easier to develop software. These include edit marks, automatic saving of edits, improved rapid application development (RAD) features, and others. Visual Studio 2005 also contains improved graphical tools for specific application scenarios, such as Web page development and data access.

·         Development of Applications in .NET Framework 2.0

·         Development of applications that integrate with Microsoft SQL Server. 2005 Beta 2 or earlier  versions of SQL Server, and development of managed code that runs inside of SQL Server 2005.

 

 

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is the new version of the object-oriented programming environment used to develop applications ranging from traditional command-line or graphical user interface (GUI) applications to Web applications and XML Web services. The .NET Framework 2.0 base class library (BCL) supports backward compatibility with earlier versions and also offers some enhancements to classes to perform common programming tasks such as string management, data collection, database connectivity, and file access. In addition to these common tasks, the BCL includes many enhancements to namespaces that support a variety of specialized development  scenarios, including:

 

1.   ADO.NET 2.0, which consists of classes for efficient data access.

2.   System.Xml 2.0, which consists of classes that enable you to read, write, manipulate, and

transform XML.

3. Windows Forms 2.0, which consists of classes to develop rich-client Windows GUI applications.

 4.  Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, which consists of classes to build Web applications and XML Web

services.

 

Software developers with experience with earlier versions of Visual Studio .NET will find many productivity enhancements in Visual Studio 2005.

 

Some of the most useful of these enhancements include:

 Edit marks

Visual Studio 2005 provides you with a visual indication of what has changed during the editing session. It distinguishes between the changes you have made that have not yet been saved and changes you have made during the current session that have been saved to disk.

Code snippets and code expansions

Visual Studio 2005 comes with a library of code snippets for common programming tasks. Code snippet is the name used in Visual Basic, but in Visual C# and other languages, it is known as code expansion. You can insert a code snippet into your code to achieve a programming task, instead of searching the documentation or code samples for examples. You can also create your own code

snippets.

Visual C# IDE refactoring tools

The C# IDE includes a suite of tools that automate many common code refactoring tasks.

Developers can easily rename classes, fields, properties, and methods, extract code into its own method, reorder or delete parameters to a method, promote a local variable to be a parameter, encapsulate fields, and perform many other refactoring tasks. The tools ensure that when any change is made, all dependant modules are also updated.

 

Visual Basic productivity enhancements

Visual Studio 2005 delivers a long-requested feature, which is the ability to correct programming errors during debugging and continue to run without restarting the program. There are many other productivity enhancements, including the MyServices abstraction. MyServices are a series of coded shortcuts that make it easier to find system and application resources. For example, code such as My.Computer and My.WebServices are programmatic shortcuts to system resources and Web service references respectively.