The Microsoft Product Roadmap, October 2003 Edition

[Joshua]

As has been the case at every Microsoft event this year, company
executives updated Microsoft's product roadmap at the Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 in Los Angeles. Longhorn
beta 1 will ship in late summer 2004, possibly at about the time of
next year's PDC (not a given, but that's my guess). No company
executives said anything about beta 2 or the final release date, so
don't believe any of the 2006 rumors--at least not yet. Windows XP
Service Pack 2 (SP2) is due to appear in the first half of 2004.
Windows Server 2003 SP1 will be delivered sometime after XP SP2, in
the second half of 2004; AMD64 versions of Windows 2003 will ship at
the same time as SP1. A new version of XP Tablet PC Edition
(code-named Lonestar) will ship in the first half of 2004. The next
version of Microsoft SQL Server (code-named Yukon) will ship in the
second half of 2004, after a widespread beta 2 release in the first
half of the year. Somewhat tied to Yukon is Visual Studio .NET
(code-named Whidbey), which will follow a similar trajectory.