I agree, IF they pull it off it will only further their hold on the desktop. But it looks less likely that they will, at least completely. Longhorn was supposed to be a leap equal to or bigger than W2k/XP and yet it seems that many of the features (WinFS, for example) are being cut and now the timeline has now expanded to the longest ever for a MS desktop OS update - and we are still at least 18 months away so there is a lot of time left for the MS to say it will be an '07 release! I can see MS rolling out the various Longhorn parts, such as Indigo and Avalon, in pieces just to keep us thinking about it. This will seriously reduce the impact of Longhorn when it does eventually ship as well giving other OS vendors time to react. The next 3 years should be interesting.

Todd