Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft should release the first official alpha version of Longhorn at WinHEC2004, a hardware engineering conference this week in Seattle. Longhorn is a future generation of Microsoft Windows that will not be ready for "at least a couple of more years".

Ready for some big numbers?

Microsoft is expected to recommend the following as the "average" Longhorn PC configuration:

• dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz,
• RAM of at least 2 Gigabytes,
• disk capacity of up to 1 Terabyte,
• Gigabit Ethernet (for wired connections),
• 802.11g wireless networking, and
• graphics subsystem running at three times the speed of what is on the market today.

Do you think that by late-2005 or 2006 most people will be sitting in front of machines that are as powerful as this?

The hardest thing for me to understand about these requirements is the wireless networking component. With all of the other leaps in performance that Microsoft is expecting and the rate at which wireless network performance is increasing, wouldn't you expect that the requirements would be beyond 802.11g, a standard that is readily available today?