microsoft has laid out its plan for shipping the next version of its windows operating system for personal computers in 2006 but to meet its timetable the company has scaled back its technological ambitions for the productthe decision analysts say represents a pragmatic blend of business and technical considerations microsofts last major release of its desktop operating system windows xp was in 2001 and the timing for the new version codenamed longhorn had been slippingthe fiveyear gap is a long one for microsoft which has traditionally shipped a new version of windows every three or four yearsmicrosofts sales and profits and opportunities for much of the pc industry typically surge in the wake of major new releases of windows the software that controls the basic operations on more than 90 per cent of all pcs sold worldwidethe firm has long declared that longhorn will represent a bold step ahead in personal computing the major innovations microsoft executives predicted will include tvstyle 3d graphics capability for automated machinetomachine communications and a revolutionary data storage system for intelligently finding any kind of information in text music or video files inside a pc or even on the web but the intelligent datastorage system called winfs will not be part of longhorn in 2006 one of the major things that microsoft was touting as part of longhorn vision is being left out said david m smith a gartner analystthe compromise smith said was practical and not particularly surprising because the project was very complex and difficult to pull off and microsoft he added has found that some of the informationfinding and smartsearch goals can be achieved with simpler technologyin july for example microsoft demonstrated a research project for finding information in all sorts of files inside a pc exploiting its windows franchise to combine searching inside a pc with web searching is a central part of microsofts strategy for competing with the search leader googlemicrosoft portrayed its longhorn decision as a necessary winnowing to hit the 2006 timetablethe announcement microsoft executives insisted didnt point to setback in software development but showed the firm had a surplus of innovation and not all of it could make it into windows for 2006nyt news service