An insiders view on the implications of Avalon being deployed on XP and 2003 Server

Joe Beda has some very interesting comments on his blog about the impact of the changes in the Longhorn roadmap on Avalon.  The most interesting snip for me was:

Terminal Services and Remote Desktop. We were planning on remoting Avalon at a completely different layer.  It is unclear how we will address this issue on platforms other than Longhorn.  The long term plan and architecture still encompass enhanced remoting.

I liked his concluding comment:

What is your personal opinion on these changes, Joe? Thanks for asking!  Personally I’m really excited by these changes.  It is painful to have to sacrifice (at least when running on XP and W2k3 — they may “light up on Longhorn”) some of the features that require deep changes to the system but the overall result of being able to deliver Avalon to XP and W2k3 outweigh that pain dramatically.  Anything we can do to get Avalon out the door on a more deterministic schedule and to deliver it to a wider audience of developers seems like a good thing to me.

Everyone in Microsoft is saying that they are exited, its the party line but I do think its the right decision.  I will be posting in a minute on some of the concerns, but overall tough decisions have been taken.