Will Poole, the recently appointed head of Microsoft's Windows client business, has a tough couple of years ahead of him.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and other top Microsoft brass have been doling out tantalizing bits on Longhorn for the past year. They have shown private demonstrations of the next Windows desktop to hardware partners, software partners, top customers and the volunteer Most Valuable Professional squad. A few builds of the product — including 4008, which debuted on the Web this weekend — have escaped the company's hallowed halls. People who have seen Longhorn are excited by it and want it.

So what's the problem? The estimated 2,000 developers building it probably won't be done until 2005, according to the most recent estimates of some of my sources.

Microsoft originally was planning to deliver Longhorn by 2003. Then it slipped to 2004. Then "late 2004," according to documents penned by the company's own lawyers. Now, due to the inclusion of everything but the kitchen sink, Longhorn's looking a long way away.

Sources say the chasm between Windows XP and Longhorn will be just as wide as the one between Windows 3.X and Windows 95. Microsoft basically is redoing Windows from scratch. It's even tinkering with the sacred Win32 core of the product, replacing a number of the base application-programming interfaces (such as GDI and User) with the .Net Framework APIs, sources claim.

Microsoft's already spilled the beans on the inclusion of the SQL Server "Yukon" store in Longhorn. And it's hinted at the nifty natural-language-query-style search that will be built in. No more endless quests for files, e-mail messages and other data on your own PC, your corporate LAN or the Web. Just type: "Give me all the records that mention green tea sales for 2003," and Longhorn will do the rest.

There's more. Much more. Microsoft wants to out-google Google. To paint Picassa out of the picture. To core Apple's user interface. To leap tall buildings with a single bound .... No, wait! That was the old Microsoft "Cairo" operating system that disappeared into a phone booth back in the mid 1990s.

But until Longhorn gets trimmed back and ultimately pushed out the door, Microsoft will be flogging Windows XP - the "best selling version of Windows of all time." Just last week, Microsoft announced some new upgrade tools and a portal designed to get business users excited about those delayed XP migrations they've been sitting on. And there's always XP Service Pack 2 waiting in the wings, as well as a couple of updates to the Tablet PC and Windows Media Center spin-offs of XP.

Somehow, these seem kind of dull, compared to the new bull who rules the corral, don't they? Last year, some developers had heard talk inside the Redmond halls of a possible interim version of Windows between XP and Longhorn. But those rumors have fizzled, too.

As Windows is one of Microsoft's main two cash cows, Microsoft can't afford for consumers and businesses to stop buying Windows desktops until Longhorn arrives. Until then, what should Redmond do? Come out with a "Shorthorn" stopgap release? Slash XP prices? (Since Microsoft likes to point out that "free" doesn't matter when computing total cost of ownership, why not try giving away Windows, a la open source?)

What would you do if you were in charge of the Windows bull pen right now? Send your ideas to me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com.