I read somewhere (in one of my avantgo tech channels I think) that longhorn's minimal requirements are something like 512MB ram, DX9c and 533MHz cpu/bus speeds (or adm equivalent) and DSL and that the recomended requirements are even higher. Is it just me or does MS's OS's do a terrible job at managing hadrware efficiency? Now the question, why these requirements, what is Longhorn all about? What is so radically different? Peace.

There is no longhorn. There is a long history of botched spftware. I think the last one which did not get 'patched' or 'updated' was DOS 5.00 M2 If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Longhord is the code name for the next generation of Microsoft Windows. Look here for a preview (bear in mind its three years old). As to the actual OS minimum hardware requirement, M$ is still tight-lipped about it. My understanding is that Longhorn will have all the bells and Whistles of XP plus a lot more. i_XpUser

Some interesting info about Longhorn. An interesting disussion of Longhorn's relative merits and new features. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a modern operating system to support 10-year old hardware (by the time Longhorn is released) unless you're talking about mainframes or other specialized hardware. And I really don't think it's reasonable to define "terrible job at managing hadrware efficiency" as "not running optimally on decade-old systems" as you seem to, Stimpy. And M2, tounge-in-cheek as your comment may have been, there are plenty of people who seriously believe what you said. To them I would say - ongoing software maintenance != botched software. Unless you consider Solaris, MacOSX, Unix, Linux, BeOS, Netware, and pretty much every other major OS to be "botched". Your comment would seem to imply that MSDOS 5.0 is a superior operating system to Windows server because it isn't/wasn't updated. As soon as I disconnect from my terminal services session on the load-balanced DOS server cluster I will have more to say on that ;)