Similarly, Microsoft backtracked on plans for a new database-style file system. Instead, it will put some interesting capabilities into Longhorn for searching data across applications, with richer indexing and metatagging. The prototypes look good, but Google and Yahoo desktop products may not be that far behind.

Microsoft has started an "ultramobile" project called Haiku. The target is a full PC weighing less than 2 pounds and sized slightly smaller than a steno notebook, with a 3G cellular radio, camera and touchscreen built in. It would play music and movies, run more than 6 hours on a battery charge and sell for less than $1,000 when it hits in 2007 or so.

This could be just another misfired PDA, but chairman Bill Gates is big on it. Bill Mitchell, the Microsoft mobile vice president who ran the Windows CE and PocketPC programs, is driving the project.

Intel Corp. has tipped plans for something along the same lines. Its On-the-Go PC weighs 2.5 pounds, comes with a DVD player and has an innovative 8-inch screen that acts as a speaker. It will sell for less than $1,000 this year, based on Intel's Centrino and a shrink of its latest chip set. This space bears watching.

Threats

Longhorn arrives at an awkward moment in the evolution of wireless networking and packaged media, two of the hottest vectors in computing. Standards for ultrawideband, 802.11n and WiMax short-, local- and wide-area nets are being hammered out even as Longhorn approaches first beta release this summer. At the same time, a consolidation of high-definition DVD formats is in the works.

Thus, solid support for the new wireless and DVD features will not be natively baked into the next OS, at least not in its first incarnation. Microsoft fully appreciates the awkwardness of the situation and is responding as best it can. Nevertheless, the bad timing will create some time-to-market and interoperability bumps in the road for the first Windows products to build in those technologies.

Specifically, Microsoft is rewriting its Wi-Fi stack and creating a wireless "extensibility framework" so that system and chip makers can add in their own code supporting .11n, WiMax and UWB products. Microsoft has also joined the WiMedia alliance to get closer to the UWB standards process.

Some observers here predicted a replay the fiasco that occurred when Windows XP came out without support for Bluetooth. But given the strong focus Microsoft and Intel are putting on UWB, don't expect that.