WinInsider

Paul Thurrott has put together interesting summary of all the info from Microsoft 2003 Financial Analysts Meeting.  Here is only one excerpt...

Longhorn Not Just Windows, But Next Generation
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates got the day going with a pie-in-the-sky view of the company's objectives moving forward, but the most interesting thing he said concerned Longhorn, which the company views more as a platform generation than a single product. That is, there won't be just a Longhorn client release (and, yes, the corresponding server release as first reported right here in WinInfo), but also corresponding releases of Microsoft Office and other products. "Longhorn is the next generation; it's a big bet for us," Gates said. "We don't know the exact time frame of it. It's clearly many years of work that we're engaging in. We're very excited about the prototypes we've built, and some of the early technology proofs that we have. We've got a major advance in the user interface [Aero], a major advance in the API [Avalon]. It has this new storage capability [WinFS], it's got Web services as sort of a built-in piece of the platform, and it's very oriented around scenarios, making it easy to manage workflows, making it easy to manage contacts. For our customer, taking the idea of the way you deal with photos and music and just unifying those into the single storage metaphor. Longhorn is not just a release of the Windows client, it's also a release where in the same time frame you'll have advances in Office, our server products, virtually everything at Microsoft is synchronized to build on this platform in, and take advantage of that." And lest you still not understand that Longhorn is a huge release, consider CEO Steve Ballmer's comments about the release. "There needs to be periodic big bangs," he said. "That's how we think about Longhorn."

Here is outline of the rest...

• MS Financial Analysts Meeting (MSFAM): Gates, Execs Talk Up Future Advances
• Longhorn Beta 1 Still on Track for 2004
• Longhorn in 2005?
• Windows 9x, NT 4 Still Huge
• Windows XP SP2 This Year
• New Version of Plus! Digital Media Edition on the Way
• Making the Money
• Investing in People, R&D
• Microsoft, Linux, and Security
• There's More
  • AOL Inflated Its Subscriber Numbers
  • Microsoft Relaxes Licensing Rules
  • Apple Takes Down Switch Ads