"Longhorn" Alpha Preview
WinSubSite | at | by Mike
This is an early alpha build and the final Longhorn product will bear little resemblance to what you see here. If you think back to the early Whistler builds, which featured the "Watercolor" visual style, you'll get the right idea: Longhorn is a work in progress, mostly current generation technology, and much of what's in there is just the same old stuff from XP. Major UI work, a database-based file system, integrated DVD burning, and other cool features are still to come.
The Longhorn alpha's Welcome screen is a slightly modified version of the one in Windows XP, and it now features a time and date display, a frequent customer request. I wouldn't make too much of the color scheme or look and feel of the Longhorn Welcome screen, as this is bound to change. The design does resemble prototypes I've seen at the Microsoft campus (Figure), however.