Can Chris Jones save Longhorn?
Microsoft brings back "the closer" to run the Longhorn project
Wednesday, June 29, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Microsoft has brought back veteran product closer, Chris Jones to manage the Longhorn project. Chris Jones was one of the primary forces behind getting Whistler (Windows XP) out the door.
He replaces Joe Peterson in managing Longhorn's day to day movement towards release.
"Chris Jones…was brought back from COSD to save the (Longhorn) product," said one source.
Longhorn has seen a number of features removed during its beta journey including WinFS, the Business Framework, the Side bar, the scripted shell, and other elements. Longhorn is currently scheduled for release in mid-2006. The first public beta is due out this Summer.
Mary Jo Foley has more..
Reply #22 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 3:19 PM
| Guess OSX and leapord will still be leagues ahead when longhorn comes out. |
And Linux of course.

Reply #23 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 4:12 PM
And by linux i meant distros not the kernel =P
Reply #24 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 7:33 PM
| In fact its damn near impossible because when reformat a partition as a new filesystem, it has to get wiped. |
Fat32 can be converted to NTFS without a reformat...
Chances are that the same will apply with any new MS file systems in the future...
Reply #25 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 7:38 PM
| So yeah you can try the betas, and you can actually wait for the OS to come out and preach MS love by yelling out "JUST WAIT JUST WAIT". But if you dont read what MS is actually saying their longhorn, then you shouldnt mention my ignorance |
Hey don't get all worked up about like nothing! By the time Beta 1 is released Longhorn will be about 35% complete. And I did read about Longhorn, enough to know that the partial GUI is quite a recent development in several years of developing. I sense a lot of frustration in your posts, it clouds your judgement. But make no doubt I know you will make the final purchasing decision.
| WinFS, despite its name, is not a new file system. The Longhorn file system will still be NTFS. WinFS is a OS component that indexes files for easy search like Google Desktop Search or Apple's Spotlight do. |
Absolutely incorrect. WinFS is a new file system and has nothing to do with the upcoming faster desktop search engine. It may only make it more efficient once available for implementation in Longhorn, which at first will be shipped with NTFS (which you rightly pointed out).
| Second, there is no guarantee that Longhorn will sell all that well on anything but brand-new computers. Half of all Windows installations are Windows 2000 despite XP being available for 4 years now. |
False. Although this statement of yours needs to be checked, it may only apply to business customers. Definitely not the general average customers.
Reply #26 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 8:29 PM
| Fat32 can be converted to NTFS without a reformat... Chances are that the same will apply with any new MS file systems in the future... |
Wow I didnt know that.
What software do you use to convert without axing the data. Im guessing using something like magic partitioner will do the trick. I just know with reiserfs, I gotta wipe the thing =P.
| Hey don't get all worked up about like nothing! By the time Beta 1 is released Longhorn will be about 35% complete. And I did read about Longhorn, enough to know that the partial GUI is quite a recent development in several years of developing. I sense a lot of frustration in your posts, it clouds your judgement. But make no doubt I know you will make the final purchasing decision. |
So your saying by summer 2005, longhorn will be 35% complete. And this thing is coming out in winter 2006.
. Something tells me you never had to go through the anticipation of waiting for win95 and win98 and win2000 and winME and winXP. Cause I have. A LOT of people are frustrated. No "I" never made a final purchasing desicion when it came to MS product. "I" most likely never will make the final purchasing decision. It was decided for me that I would have to buy these OSes wheather it was for interopability for the applications they make or for specific IDE's that are there, or for games that insist I use the thing. If I wasnt backed into a corner, I know damn well I wouldnt get any MS product. I can tell you I never bought these products because I wanted to.I sense a lot of bullshit in your posts though. No need to call me ignorant, or say I have clouded judgement for the sake of your argument. I know what Im talking about.
Reply #27 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 8:44 PM
Its more of a storage system (as said in the windows website) then it is a whole new file system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
Reply #28 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 8:49 PM
| Absolutely incorrect. WinFS is a new file system and has nothing to do with the upcoming faster desktop search engine. It may only make it more efficient once available for implementation in Longhorn, which at first will be shipped with NTFS (which you rightly pointed out). |
I read somewhere that WinFS is nothing more than NTFS with some special features laid over the top of the NTFS core.
| I sense a lot of bullshit in your posts though. No need to call me ignorant, or say I have clouded judgement for the sake of your argument. I know what Im talking about. |
I agree...
Reply #29 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 9:15 PM
At a command prompt type 'convert /?' without the quotes.
It'll explain the options.
No extra proggy needed at all...
Reply #30 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 9:28 PM
| At a command prompt type 'convert /?' without the quotes. It'll explain the options. No extra proggy needed at all... |
Ok cool thanks. Is there any inconsistancies that occur when doing this that dont arrise when jut reformatting as NFTS?
Oh and can I go to NFTS to FAT32, and if so, Is it possible to make it bigger than 32 gigs =P. Ive heard that formatting under windows puts in that limitation, so i do it under linux.
Reply #31 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 9:49 PM
I think the last 'limit' reached in storage was due to the IDE format limitations....the MoBo has to support IDE 100 or better...not 33 or 66.
My data drive is a single partition 160gig NTFS formatted via Win XP as Fat32 and later converted.
'Convert' doesn't do reverse and retain the data....but from memory Partition Magic can....
Reply #32 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 10:00 PM
I would love to use NTFS, but the linux ability to write to a NTFS is buggy at best, so i stick with FAT32.
Im guessing that windows partioner still doesnt consider those hardware limitations. My MOBO is new, im not sure on the IDE support, but i believe its > than 100.
Bah and I dont wanna buy partition Magic.
Reply #33 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 10:10 PM
If you're running XP then definitely convert to NTFS...it's probably the best aspect of the whole OS ....I've never had data corruption in NTFS...even in a brown-out or blackout.
No more cross-linked files and conflicting Fat tables...
Reply #34 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 10:33 PM
Gonna section off 20 gigs for a nice NTFS partition, then 20 gigs for linux (including swap, reiserfs, and seperate ext2 boot) and a very large fat32 partition for my data (music, movies, games, source code, etc).
Looks like i will be backing up my data and diving right in
Reply #35 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 4:36 AM
| I sense a lot of bullshit in your posts though. No need to call me ignorant, or say I have clouded judgement for the sake of your argument. I know what Im talking about. |
| I agree... |
I don't care what y'all think that I know. I reckon all y'all are doing is passive reading and easy criticism. MS has blogs and Channel9: if you want to be more active and less viper tongues, go check it out!
| If I wasnt backed into a corner, I know damn well I wouldnt get any MS product. I can tell you I never bought these products because I wanted to. |
I call this frustration. How would ya call it?
| In fact it doesnt look like winfs is really whole new FS at all. It looks like its a bunch of services that is integrated with the current NTFS filesystem to allow it to have more features, like the spotlight feature in OSX. |
No. WinFS does not enable the FastSearch feature in code named Longhorn. FastSearch will work on NTFS and you will be able to use it right at OS release. WinFS will only make it more efficient and allow for searches to be made based on data relationships (author, matadata...), which is deeper than what Spotlight allows. Leopard could change that though.
Reply #36 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 10:54 AM
Half of all Windows installations are Windows 2000 despite XP being available for 4 years now. I find that hard to believe. No, check that. I find it impossible to believe. Do you have evidence of this? |
Check here: http://www.itjungle.com/two/two062205-story01.html It was a big story since official support for Windows 2000 was coming to an end. XP came so quickly after 2000 that most people and especially companies refused to replace 2000.
Reply #37 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 11:05 AM
"Windows 2000 is still installed on nearly half of corporate desktops."
Reply #39 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 4:12 PM
| I don't care what y'all think that I know. I reckon all y'all are doing is passive reading and easy criticism. MS has blogs and Channel9: if you want to be more active and less viper tongues, go check it out! |
Oh here it comes again. More on you telling me on how much I looked into Longhorn. OOo yay blogs, everyone knows that they are a perfect gauge in how software engineering project is going
. I am reading what MS the corporation says, not scroungin around for junk like blogs.You obviously dont know jack about longhorn yourself. If you read microsoft's website, they say that winfs is not a new filesystem, but a set of services loosely based on sql services and several other services, which is built on top of the ntfs base structure. In fact WinFS will be on windowsXP. And it will NOT be out with Longhorn. And fast indexing was a feature explicitly mentioned for winfs.
They are not making a new filesystem from scratch.
At least before I say anything I aint sure about, I look it up, then get back to ya, rather then spewing crap and labeling people. To me it seems like you have nothing to say
Reply #40 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 5:10 PM
| And it will NOT be out with Longhorn. And fast indexing was a feature explicitly mentioned for winfs. |
I never said WinFS would be available when Longhorn ships. I said a Beta version of the said file system would appear in a reasonably short lapse of time following Longhorn release period. Fast indexing was initially said to be part of the WinFS pillar but since WinFS would not be included in LH anytime soon, the indexing service and "Fast Search" (name may vary according to sources) were detached from the WinFS feature pack and incorporated into current pre-beta versions of Longhorn. In terms of WinFS itself more details need yet to be leaked as MS steps through its development. So far WinFS sat on top of an NTFS partition and required a file redirector to access the bits and data that's under WinFS. If your point was how your partition will appear in your disk properties, then you were right about that. It'll very likely be "NTFS". On a more "technical" level though the way your system will interact with your files will vary significantly from how things are handled today. Files will no longer be simple entities with a few simple vital stats we call properties (name, location, date...) but they will be part of communities and we'll get interested in gathering more information about them, creating new ways to organize them, sort them or search for them. I believe it's close to the metaphor MS had in mind when they conceived that new file storage system pretty much. To go beyond the file cell
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!








Reply #21 Tuesday, July 5, 2005 2:03 PM
Guess OSX and leapord will still be leagues ahead when longhorn comes out.