This is interesting. According to Scoble (and numerous others), last summer Microsoft made what can only be seen as a very tough decision. They threw out Longhorn. Then they started fresh from Windows 2003 server. I wouldn't have wanted to be Jim Allchin when he told BillG.

This definitely explains why Vista's taken so long to get in our hands. To be honest, the fact that it's in beta after a year of development is pretty impressive. My last project took almost a year from start to finish, and it was just a website!