Microsoft laid out its plan on Friday for shipping the next version of its Windows operating system for personal computers in 2006, but to meet its timetable the company has scaled back its technological ambitions for the product.
The decision, analysts say, represents a pragmatic blend of business and technical considerations. Microsoft's last major release of its desktop operating system, Windows XP, was in 2001, and the timing for the new version, code-named Longhorn, had been slipping. The five-year gap is a long one for Microsoft, which has traditionally shipped a new version of Windows every three or four years.
Microsoft's sales and profits -- and opportunities for much of the PC industry -- typically surge in the wake of major new releases of Windows, the software that controls the basic operations on more than 90 percent of all personal computers sold worldwide.
Microsoft leads a vast parade each time a new version of Windows enters the marketplace. And to get others to follow -- PC makers, corporate customers and software companies whose products run on the Windows operating system -- Microsoft must set out its game plan a couple of years in advance. That is what Microsoft did on Friday.
Microsoft has long declared that Longhorn would represent a bold step ahead in personal computing. The major innovations, Microsoft executives predicted, would include television-style three-dimensional graphics, the capability for automated machine-to-machine communications and a revolutionary data storage system for intelligently finding any kind of information in text, music or video files inside a PC or even on the Web.
But the intelligent data-storage system, called WinFS, will not be part of Longhorn in 2006. "One of the major things that Microsoft was touting as part of the Longhorn vision is being left out," said David Smith, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
The compromise, Smith said, was practical and not particularly surprising because "the project was very complex and difficult to pull off." And Microsoft, he added, has found that some of the information-finding and smart-search goals can be achieved with simpler technology.
Last month, for example, Microsoft demonstrated a research project for finding information in all sorts of files inside a PC.
Exploiting its Windows franchise to combine searching inside a PC with Web searching is a central part of Microsoft's strategy for competing with the search leader, Google.
Microsoft portrayed its Long-horn decision as a necessary winnowing to hit the 2006 timetable. Friday's announcement, Microsoft executives insisted, did not point to a setback in software development, but showed that the company had a surplus of innovation -- and not all of it could make it into Windows for 2006.
In the last few years, Microsoft has done a lot to improve the quality, reliability and security of its software, as it engages in a constant battle with wave after wave of computer viruses that are released on the Internet.
"There is a tremendous amount of technology that we've innovated on that we need to bring to customers in a new operating system," said Will Poole, a senior vice president for Windows.
The 2006 timetable, Microsoft executives said, was essential. In an internal e-mail message on Friday, Jim Allchin, the Microsoft group vice president in charge of Windows, wrote: "We will not cut corners on product excellence. Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision sooner."
Two major elements of Long-horn -- the 3D graphics user interface, codenamed Avalon; and the machine-to-machine Web services communication technology, codenamed Indigo -- will be included in the 2006 Windows desktop operating system.
Those capabilities will also be made available for the Windows XP desktop and Windows 2003 Server operating systems in 2006, sharply increasing the potential number of end users and software developers for the technology.
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