Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Early code of Whistler, the next version of Windows 2000, due to go into beta by mid-year, has escaped onto the Web. Microsoft seems to have confirmed that the code is genuine by saying it's investigating the breakout, but is so far taking a pretty laid-back attitude. As well it might - reports indicate that there's nothing earth-shatteringly secret about the current build of Whistler, which tends to confirm our suspicions that "Windows 2001" is going to be one of those eminently do-able and shippable point revs Microsoft's been getting into of late. It'll be a honing and cleaning up of the Win2k base code with added bells and whistles, and - possibly - the Mars shell. But that's not in the current code. According to ActiveWin, which broke the story, the internal build, 2211.1, was posted on "various college and Internet sites" on Monday morning. It looks "almost identical" to Win2k, but includes some HTML enhancements to folders. It also includes marscore.dll, possibly ready and waiting for Mars itself. The addition of Mars is, however, by no means a certainty, nor is it definite that the demo versions that have been seen already, which are a sort of halfway house between shell and MSN client, are any indication of what, if anything, Mars will turn out to be. Last year Microsoft was planning new user interface technology for addition to Millennium, but this was pulled, and it could easily happen again. There's also a problem in terms of look and feel, as regards Whistler, because this OS rev is intended to merge the business and consumer upgrades previously codenamed Odyssey and Neptune respectively. Clearly, a jazzy MSN type UI isn't going to play in business, so it's going to have to change, not get used in the business version, or - in our view the most likely outcome - there won't really be a consumer version this time. Again. ® Related Stories MS roadmaps Balckcomb, plans mid-year Whistler beta Consumer Win2k Neptune not cancelled, just not happening See Also ActiveWin

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery