Microsoft: Longhorn much faster, better than Windows XP

Microsoft-Watch has some information about the fundamental improvements Microsoft Longhorn will deliver. The company finally provided some metrics to the press:

Longhorn will:
launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows XP does
boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds
allow users to patch systems with 50 percent fewer reboots required
reduce the number of system images required by 50 percent
enable companies to migrate users 75 percent faster than they can with existing versions of Windows.

The first beta version of Longhorn is expected to go out to testers by early August and the Beta 2 is slated for somewhere in the first half of 2006.

One of Microsoft's impressive goals is to allow administrators to install Longhorn on new systems in only 15 minutes. In addition, the company plans to provide users a single scanning tool to check the patch state of Longhorn. The Windows team is also working to improve Longhorn's patch discovery and reporting capabilities and will enable patches to be directly applied to system images.

The Longhorn operating system will also include proactive diagnostic tools to check for things such as hard-drive failure, battery-life and other performance-related features. And of course security will be polished too.

"Our preliminary research shows that Longhorn will help drive down costs in administering and managing PCs," Stephan concluded. "It will lower security, deployment, administration and support costs" in a way that hasn't been seen since the company delivered Windows 95 ten years ago."

Check out Microsoft-Watch for more details.