So after getting all the hardware happy, the first thing you'll notice is the look. Here we have Aero, Longhorn's current suit of clothes. Its gray, basic but easy on the eyes (olive green should have never happened). While temporary, Aero is in an intrem state until DWM/Avalon is fully supported. Those that were around in the Whistler days will remember the many different suits MS tried on before settling on the rather benign Blue, Silver, and Olive Green themes. I took a peek into the Themes directory, it appears things are not quite the same as in the past, but still recognizable. I'm sure that will soon be cracked wide open.

and more Aero here:

Start Menu:

You'll notice of course that the "All Programs" popup menu has now been migrated to the left hand side of the start menu. The left hand side where the "Most frequently used programs" usually lives gets replaced by your installed programs. Quite nifty. Right now that feature has some ergonomic issues, once I started installing programs, things got cumbersome. Longer names tend to get truncated, and the scrolling down is not quite as easy as I'd have liked. Of course those of you with more monitor real estate than my modest 1024x768 may not run into these issues. If this feature makes the cut as time goes on, we'll probably see a wider start menu to keep the nested directories visible as you open them up. Frankly in its current configuration, I prefer the old way.

DWM (Desktop Window Manager):

Known before as DCE, or Desktop Composition Engine, DWM is used to draw the interface in Longhorn. It is built to use Avalon which will be replacing the GDI interface of current Windows versions. With the expected steep hardware requirements of a mature longhorn, Microsoft can now use the powerful graphics processors in modern computers to enable visually stunning, and a fluid UI. Though the true Aero interface that will be used in conjunction with DWM has yet to be implemented and its unlikely we will see this feature enabled any time soon. Currently in build 5048, it is available as a service named "User Experience Session Management Service"

Unfortunately according to the below message, after enabling the service, and rebooting windows reported that the computer needed OLDER hardware than I currently had available. I suspect that is by design with this public build. It will be curious to find out if anyone does actually get it to start with the specified graphics cards. Let the registry games begin.

*update*

DWM, has now been unlocked. Like i suspected its mearly a registry key that needed planting. You can download the key here with instructions. It would appear that from early tests, a full hardware DirectX 9 video card is what you need to keep things running correctly with DWM enabled. Be warned.

While obviously we can't expect it to be functionally complete, its a nice tidbit of what to expect. Beware, you may have issues, and hard reboots may occur.