Microsoft codename 'Longhorn' beta 1 to be released today?
Longhorn Beta 1. It's been a long time coming - a distant mirage in the desert sands of time...
It really has felt like that since longhorn started out in alpha oh so many years ago.
Well the wait is finally over!
One more night of pitching your tent, watering your camel, and you will wake to find that mirage is really an oasis just over the sanddune in front of you.
WinBeta is proud to exclusively reveal that tomorrow (Wednesday) Microsoft are expected to formally announce the availability of Beta 1 to it's testers.
Build 5112 is expected to be announced as the build of choice to hold the Beta 1 badge of honour. Although rumors being what they are the fat lady has not sung yet, there is still the possibility of another build.
This will reveal to the world simultaneously the progress Microsoft has made in it's successor to Windows XP as well as a first look glimpse at Internet Explorer 7.
Speculation is rife that Microsoft has pulled out all the stops to make this beta compatible with as much hardware as possible and has included a plethora of drivers. One suggestion was that 50%+ of the new build will be purely drivers.
Given that minimal drivers exist in the 831MB build of 5048 from WinHec we would estimate the beta build has the possibility of being larger than 2GB in size. Certainly this is a huge increase in size compared to the previous publicly tested build, 5048 from Microsoft's WinHec conference in April.
