• Sidebar: Levels of UI in Longhorn
• Illustration: Media Center Concept PC

Designing hardware and software for complete user scenarios, "seamless computing" that integrates products from disparate manufacturers, and the emergence of 64-bit processing were major themes of Microsoft's thirteenth annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in May 2004. However, the conference, which is a forum at which Microsoft updates hardware manufacturers on its plans for the Windows platform to ensure that future hardware will support its vision, did not have much information on "Longhorn" (the code name for Microsoft's next client version of Windows).

Design for Complete Experiences

Platforms Group Vice President Jim Allchin used his WinHEC keynote address to illustrate how Microsoft and hardware manufactures must improve computers by "nailing fundamentals" such as reliability and by addressing end-to-end scenarios. For example, instead of thinking of digital photography as a set of unconnected tasks, Microsoft tried with Windows XP to consider the entire process: moving images from a digital camera to a PC, performing any editing, printing pictures, and even personalizing the process for users who might share a computer with other users.

Microsoft followed Allchin’s keynote themes of reliability and user scenarios by presenting technologies that will make device drivers more reliable, ease the configuration of wireless networks, and ease the installation of Windows on new computers.

Windows Driver Foundation (WDF). Microsoft is proposing a new framework for writing Windows device drivers to improve their reliability and performance. This new model addresses several shortcomings with the existing driver model, such as supporting Plug and Play and power management for different device drivers and the need to write too many drivers as kernel-level code. (For more details on WDF, see "Windows Driver Foundation Aims to Make Drivers More Reliable".)

Windows smart network key. To address wireless network configuration and security, a configuration wizard in Windows XP Service Pack 2 allows a user to create configuration information for a network and then use a USB flash drive to transfer the configuration data to all the other wireless devices on the network. The ability to easily configure wireless networks will be particularly important if they are to expand into homes and small businesses with limited computer expertise.

Another potential use of USB flash drives is the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE). WinPE is designed to make it easier for OEMs and customers to install Windows on bare metal PCs. In the future, administrators will be able to use USB flash drives to start a computer with no OS, and then install Windows.

Seamless Computing

Chief Software Architect Bill Gates used his keynote address to stress the need for "seamless computing." Noting that there are still too many boundaries between parts of a PC that come from different vendors, such as motherboards, hard drives, and CD-ROM drives, and between the PC and other devices, such as game consoles, set-top boxes, phones (both traditional and mobile), and portable media players. Gates suggested that these boundaries need to be broken down by software, using concepts such as Web services, so that users can more transparently move data and content.

Gates also stressed that 64-bit computing was not just for high-end workstations and servers, but that it is coming to desktops faster than originally expected. The AMD architecture, which supports native execution of existing 32-bit applications (an architecture that Intel will also support), and the rapidly decreasing cost of 64-bit processors is driving rapid adoption of the powerful new processors and makes 64-bit device driver development critical for hardware manufacturers.

Following up on Gates's seamless computing theme, Microsoft presented information on making it easier to discover and use devices on a network and improving hard drives to support new file systems.

Windows network-connected devices. Microsoft is expanding Web services to make discovery and use of devices attached to the network as easy as discovery of devices that are physically attached to a computer. For example, when a wireless or network-attached printer is added to a network, WS-Discovery (a proposed Web services standard) would make the new printer show up on computers on the network segment with a "New Hardware Detected" dialog box. Once the printer is discovered and configured, WS-Events will make status information about the printer, such as whether a print job is complete or the printer is jammed, available to the appropriate user. Microsoft distributed an early version of a new device development kit (DDK) that provides APIs for device drivers that use the new Web services protocols. The DDK includes code and samples to help developers implement the Web services, and Microsoft announced a "Devices Profile for Web Services," coauthored with Intel, Lexmark and Ricoh, that supplies prescriptive guidance on how resource-constrained devices, such as printers, can support Web services.

Improved disk drives. Looking further into the future, Microsoft is encouraging drive manufacturers to increase performance, for example, by incorporating flash memory drives to facilitate caching.

Glimpses at Longhorn, NGSCB

Microsoft did provide attendees at the conference with an updated preview build of Longhorn, but there were few changes between this version and the version provided at the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in Oct. 2003. The Longhorn code distributed at WinHEC included updates for device driver developers.

Longhorn sessions focused on low-level technical issues, such as the Longhorn Display Driver Model. Some information was also provided on the Longhorn shell, user interface, and graphics system. (See the sidebar "Levels of UI in Longhorn".) Although some people are inferring hardware requirements from these sessions, such speculation is at best premature, since little guidance was provided on what hardware customers should purchase now to ensure they could run Longhorn when it is released.

Microsoft also said that the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), a plan to support hardware-based security on PCs in the Longhorn time frame, was being redesigned. Microsoft will be providing more details on the impact of the new architecture in the near future.

Availability and Resources

Microsoft’s WinHEC Web site is at www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx.

Information on how Microsoft expects the Windows Driver Foundation to simplify and improve drivers is at www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdf/default.mspx.

For a white paper on connecting devices with Web services, see www.microsoft.com/NET/SmartClient/web_services.mspx.

Intel’s support for the AMD 64-bit processing architecture is described in "AMD's 64-Bit Choices to Increase" on page 4 of the May 2004 Update.