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Microsoft's chief executive has declined to give a firm release date for the next version of Windows, in order to avoid disappointing customers and partners

Speaking at the company's annual partner conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer argued that promising a delivery date for Longhorn that the company couldn't actually hit would be unfair for customers and partners and would make the whole Windows upgrade cycle even more painful.

"We are going to be as transparent as we can be, but we are not promising a final ship date today," he said.

Microsoft has been persistently vague on when the various server and desktop versions of Longhorn will ship, with the year 2007 the most precise estimate so far. Speaking at the conference earlier this week, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Platform Division, also refused to be drawn on an exact release date.

Ballmer confirmed earlier rumours that the delays to the release of the latest update to Windows XP, Service Pack 2 (SP2), had an impact on the schedule for Longhorn, conceding that, "SP2 didn't help the Longhorn schedule," he said.

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Source: ZDnet