Everyone is understandably excited about the Avalon CTP. I myself am starting to play around with it. Interesting stuff. But what is happening with Longhorn? When Longhorn was first announced, it was all about the three pillars: Avalon, Indigo, and WinFS – three different aspects of WinFX. Then WinFS got dropped from the schedule. Scratch one pillar. (Two pillars is starting to seem tipsy to me.) Now Avalon and Indigo will be available on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. (Scratch two more pillars. Definitely not sounding stable.) Ummm… What’s left in Longhorn? There are vague hints in an InfoWorld article that Longhorn will provide “a host of new attributes and capabilities that will make Longhorn compelling” (Greg Sullivan, lead product manager at Microsoft). Admittedly this question has been asked before on Chris Sells’ blog, but that was months ago. Are we any closer to an answer from Redmond? Has Longhorn lost its focus?