Crystal Ball

'Millennium' - the new Windows

Stardate 8/28/99 The Windows Exchange at Microsoft indicates the company has listened to the public and is launching a successor to Windows 98, to be launched next year. It is based upon the Windows 9x kernel, unlike Windows 2000. Features
Millennium is developed incorporating these features:
Online experience
Digital media and entertainment
Home networking
Improved simplicity
Some of the specific improvements are:
System
Improved registration and auto-configuration wizards
Under 5/15 minute configuration time frame
Faster boot-up
Improved Hardware checks
Driver signing
Auto-fix: Windows will automatically reinstall deleted system files
Internet
Improved migration tools to tone down the complexity of the Internet
Internet Explorer 6.0
Networking
Simplified network usage
Simple network diagnostics and configuration
Implementation of new technologies such as IEEE 802.11b
User Interface
New Millennium theme user interface
More customization options by HTML-based Windows Activity Centers
Millennium Music Center with more options and features
Photo Center for organizing photos into an archive
Gaming Center with built in Internet Gaming
Incorporated DirectX 8.0 with more options
Completely HTML-based Desktop v.2
Release
Microsoft previewed the philosophy Millennium in July with a Developer's Release for OEMs and selected beta testers. Millennium will have three beta releases total, the second in Q4 of this year and the third in Q1 of 2000. There will be weekly releases to testers and OEMs throughout the beta phase. Microsoft is planning to release it during the back-to-school and Christmas seasons. I will keep you posted about further developments. We first indicated most of this structure in June of 1998. At that time there was no project but there was an idea.