SAN FRANCISCO — When Microsoft delivers a first beta version of Longhorn during the first half of this year, it will include support for "auxiliary displays," company officials said Wednesday at the VSLive conference.

Microsoft first talked about the auxiliary display concept at the Windows Hardware Engineering conference in 2004. And Intel showed a prototype of a device with an auxiliary display affixed to a laptop lid at its Intel Developer Forum conference last fall.

But at the VSLive show, Sriram Viji, a program manager with Microsoft's mobile platforms division, described Microsoft's strategy and vision for auxiliary displays in more depth. He said to expect Microsoft to deliver a beta version of its auxiliary display development kit at the same time as it delivers Longhorn Beta 1.

Microsoft has said to expect Beta 1 of Longhorn to debut some time in the first half of 2005. The final release is slated to ship in 2006.

Viji noted that auxiliary displays are likely to come in several flavors. They can take the form of a small display attached to or built into a laptop lid; or a software add-on to cell phones, PDAs, TVs, electronic picture frames and other "remote display" devices.

But whatever form factor they ultimately take, auxiliary displays will solve several current PC limitations, Viji said. Existing laptops and notebooks require a considerable amount of time to turn on, get running, log in and open applications. They are not conducive to logging in and operating while on the move. And their battery life of three to four hours on average limits their availability, Viji noted.

If users were able to simply glance at an auxiliary display to obtain information from their calendars; availability and location of their online buddies; or the status of their inbox – without having to power-on their PCs – they potentially could avoid some of these power consumption and time/mobility problems, Viji said.

Viji said that Microsoft is in the midst of developing with Intel an auxiliary-display hardware-reference platform. The reference platform will include an ARM processor, flash-based boot memory, between 8 and 16 megabytes of RAM for caching displayed data; and a system management bus that will allow PCs or devices to "wake up" regularly so that they can synchronize data with the auxiliary display. Microsoft is expecting auxiliary displays, regardless of their exact form factor, to be able to display 16- to 24-bit color, similar to cell phone screens.

For More Details on the Guts of the Longhorn Auxiliary-Display Technology, Go to Page 2

("Auxiliary Display Technology to Debut in Longhorn" Page 2)

The platform will be based on the run-time operating system that Microsoft is using to power its Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) smart watches, rather than on Windows CE or another Windows flavor, which Viji characterized as "too heavy" for the task.

"Microsoft is investing heavily in a reference platform" designed to show vendors the myriad auxiliary display possibilities, Viji said.

The company also is working on an accompanying "recommended hardware kit" designed to allow auxiliary displays to plug into a PC, as well as a software emulator that will allow developers to write applications and test against the auxiliary display reference platform.

At the same time, Microsoft is working on a developer beta release of the auxiliary display technology, that will consist of a software development kit (SDK) and related tools, samples and guidelines for developing applications which can take advantage of the auxiliary display technology, he said. Microsoft will provide some templates for well-known formats, such as Vcards and Vcalendar, as part of the beta, he said.

Auxiliary displays will be able to interface with PCs via a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that Microsoft is building into Longhorn, known as the Windows Portable Devices (WPD) framework, Viji said. The framework will allow not only auxiliary devices, but also digital cameras, cell phones and portable media players, to more seamlessly integrate with the core Longhorn operating system.

With WPD, "you won't need to worry about the device protocol or device management," Viji told attendees of his VSLive session.