Paul Thurrott has a great look at WinHec (the Windows Hardware Conference) and the news released there.

Ahh, someone has started a "Use a Better Browser" campaign. Personally, I say get rid of your darn browser altogether and try an RSS News Aggregator. I've found that an RSS News Aggregator lets me replace about 70% of my Internet reading activity (I found this site, in fact, in NewsGator, because I subscribe to Dori Smith's feed).

While we're on it, this page has one falsehood. It says that the next version of Internet Explorer won't come out until Longhorn. That is absolutely NOT true. The next version of Internet Explorer comes with a ton of security fixes, and a pop-up-ad blocker. It will be included in Windows XP, Service Pack 2. For free.

Are you getting tired of my News Aggregator evangelism? Oh well. If you had a news aggregator, you could just scan my headlines visually and skip anything that had anything to do with RSS.

What are some good news aggregators for Windows?

RSS Bandit
Feed Demon
Sharp Reader
NewsGator
IntraVnews

Brian Ritchie points to beta1 of Mono, an open source implementation the .NET framework for use on Linux, Unix and Windows. Congrats to Miguel and team.

.NET programmers: WindowsForms.net has posted a bunch of cool screen shots of the next version of WindowsForms (that will be included with the next version of Visual Studio, code named Whidbey). Thanks to Chris Sells for linking to these.

Robert McLaws, over on Longhornblogs, is asking "where's my WinHec build of Longhorn?"

Sorry for the lack of information. I've learned not to announce anything until after it's already happened. But, I hear it's only days away from showing up on MSDN Universal Subscriptions. I'll let you know more when I hear more.

Hmmm, Atomic Lava has a moblog site that specifically supports Microsoft's new SmartPhones with cameras. I can't wait to try this out.

PC Magazine's Bill Howard: Linking your PC to your stereo and television has never been easier, thanks to the media hub.

Is today's news all turned around? Open Source's UIs are being praised for being elegant, and now Apple is being taken to task for security flaws and alerts, according to News.com.

Acts of Volition blog covers "the rise of elegance in open source software."

Important stuff for everyone to read and think about. I wish both my Linux boxes and my Windows boxes had better, more elegant, and more consistent interfaces.

Good conversation in the comments on this article too.

eWeek's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Longhorn's Real Job: Trying to Gore Linux.

Actually we were trying to Gore the Macintosh, but Al Gore is now on Apple's board of directors, so that takes away that fun. Sigh.

"The boys from Redmond have another plan: Make it so that users of their next desktop system won't be able to use non-Microsoft-blessed servers or programs at all."

That is false. I'm using Linux/Red Hat here with my Longhorn machine and they work just fine together. When I talk with various teams, I ask them what they are doing for interoperability, and we're doing a massive amount of work on this. The Indigo team, for instance, exists solely to make sure that you can build enterprise systems that have Linux machines, Sun machines, IBM mainframes, and, even, Macs. Gasp. The world will end.

But, being afraid of Microsoft and making up conspiracy theories is always more fun than what'll really happen. I think we should start a new marketing campaign: "who can make up the most outrageous thing about Longhorn and get it printed in an industry magazine or pointed to by Slashdot?"

As to Mozilla, you guys should talk with us. We're working underneath on the foundation. Longhorn will let you make a new awesome browser that'd blow away what you're doing today. Here's a hint: I'm using Firefox on Longhorn. Works great! But it COULD BE so much better! You don't take advantage of Avalon. You don't take advantage of WinFS. These things are not threats to you. They are platform-level investments we're making for you to use. If you don't use them, I'm sure some other browser will (Opera?) and I'll switch to that.

Personally I think this whole Mozilla vs. Longhorn thing is nuts anyway. It's all about RSS. Whoever gives me the best RSS news aggregator wins. Let the aggregator wars begin!

eWeek's Mary Jo Foley got a very interesting interview with Tom Button, the guy who's running Windows marketing.

Other marketing news? 210 million people have purchased Windows XP, Forbes reports.

Tons of news from WinHec (new home PC initiative, Gates keynote transcripts, Longhorn news, and more) are up here:

WatchingMicrosoftLikeAHawk
Microsoft Watch
ActiveWin
Microsoft Monitor

By the way, is anyone weblogging from WinHec? I've seen remarkably few Weblog posts from there.

Back to Tom Button. He used to run the Visual Basic team back in the early 1990s and I ran into him a few times. Remember sitting on the floor at one of the early VBITS with him chatting.

Oh, and want to get Tom to spit up his drink? Ask him about "the Master Basic Symposium." It's what we named VBITS until Tom saw the ad (which I did). The subhead was "a hands-on look at Visual Basic" or something like that. I didn't have a dirty mind, but the team gave us heck for that for years after that. Needless to say, we changed the name and the ad.

Maybe we should take Channel9 over and have lunch with Tom and catch up on old times. Nah, we can't let marketing guys on Channel9, can we?

Geek Dinner Alert! Several people are signed up for the WinHec geek dinner Wednesday evening (tomorrow). We'll meet at McCormick and Schmick's (Harborside, on Lake Union) at 5:30 p.m. Please RSVP so I can make reservations. Dinner there is generally a little pricy, so be prepared for that.

If anyone needs a ride from WinHec, let me know.

My cell phone is 408-314-8233 in case you need to contact me.

Slashdot is pointing to Mary Jo Foley, who has a report that you need a supercomputer to run Longhorn.

As usual there's lots of conspiracy theories running in Slashdot's comments.

First of all, let's go to MSN Search (Google brings up the same result, actually), shall we, and see if there's any official information from Microsoft. So, search for "What hardware does Longhorn need?" and you find video of Joe Beda talking about this issue over on Channel9. Now, he's one of the guys who works on Avalon. A key piece of Longhorn. I believe him before I believe any unnamed source.

Second, I go around and meet lots of people working on Longhorn. Most of us have standard Dell machines. 3GHz or so. One gig of RAM. 80GB hard drives. 128MB video card (ATI or Nvidia). Some of us are lucky and have 64 bit processors from AMD or Intel. Some of us are lucky and have high res screens. Lots of us have multiple monitors.

Here's a hint. Longhorn runs on my one-year-old machine. So, obviously the rumored requirement isn't a minimum one. At least I don't think I have a 8GHz processor yet.

Also, remember, there will be different scenarios supported. Will a business user need the same capabilities that a gamer will need? Will a Tablet PC offer the same hardware capabilities that a Dell desktop will supply?

Come on people, think!

Personally, any hardware requirements won't be known until next year when beta1 comes out. So, this is all just fun speculation.

That said, go back through history. Did the Mac run on Apple II hardware? No. Did Windows 95 run on Windows 1.0 hardware? No. Will today's Linux desktop OS's run on 1990 hardware? Define run.

There will be some capabilities of Longhorn that will require new hardware. For instance, the new user interface requires a graphic processor. Why? Because it does things that are impossible to do in the processor. We'll get into those next year, but you're seeing hints of what we're trying to do there already.

Anyway, just some more fun for your evening. I sure wish I had one of those supercomputers that Mary Jo talks about on my desk, though. Hey, anyone know where I can buy one of those? I bet XP will scream on it! :-)

The Whir: According to Port 80 Software's (port80software.com) April Web server survey, Microsoft IIS continues to hold over half of the Web server market among Fortune 1000 firms.

Lee Lefever: What Conference Organizers Need to Know About Weblogs.

David McNamee, upon reading Greg Reinacker's praises of reading Channel9 on his new Media Center: "It also reminded me why any particular platform succeeds or fails - the software available for it."

Dare Obasanjo: Someone needs to setup an aggregator hall of shame.

Dana Epp, a security expert, covers why the Sasser worm doesn't hit Windows Server 2003.

I'm so proud of Maryam, my wife (who says she is not a geek). She watches several weblogs and Google News and MSNBC. She saw the reports of the Sasser worm. She checked to make sure that our firewall was on without asking me. We have two firewalls, actually, (they were on) and our machines are set to automatically load the latest patches. So we were protected.