Windows "Vienna" (formerly known as Blackcomb) is a codename for a future version of Microsoft Windows, originally announced in February 2000, but has since been subject to major delays and rescheduling.
The code name "Blackcomb" was originally assigned to Windows NT 6, an operating system that was planned to follow Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler;" both named after the Whistler-Blackcomb resort). Blackcomb would be the successor to both the desktop/workstation-oriented Windows XP (Windows NT 5.1) and the server-oriented Windows Server 2003 (Windows NT 5.2). In late 2001 the release of Blackcomb was being scheduled for 2005 and in August it was announced that a minor intermediate release, Vista (codenamed "Longhorn" after a bar in the Whistler Blackcomb Resort), would ship in 2002 to update the Windows NT 5.x line. Over the following years Longhorn morphed in fits, starts, and delays to incorporate many of the features promised for Blackcomb and was eventually designated as Windows NT 6. The status of the operating system dubbed "Blackcomb," however, was shrouded in confusion with some reports suggesting that plans for Blackcomb were scrapped while others claiming that it would be the monicker for a server-only Windows 6.x release. More likely, the codename "Blackcomb" was discarded as no longer being in the spirit of its original intent (i.e., to describe Windows NT 6). At the present, it is believed that Windows Vista's successor (referred to here as Windows "Vienna") is being planned as both a client and server release with a current release estimate of late 2009, although no firm date or year has yet been publicized. A recent article provided from Yahoo!News projected the release date to be closer to 2009.
Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, also suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric."[5] When asked to clarify what he meant, Gates said:
"That means that right now when you move from one PC to another, you've got to install apps on each one, do upgrades on each one. Moving information between them is very painful. We can use Live Services to know what you're interested in. So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things. So that's kind of the user-centric thing that Live Services can enable. [Also,] in Vista things got a lot better with [digital] ink and speech but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet. Students won't need textbooks, they can just use these tablet devices. Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We'll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we've got a pretty good outline."