InfoWorld published an article discussing Longhorn. Despite all of the Longhorn-related posts/articles I've read, I really liked this one. The Indigo part was the best - I wasn't too impressed with the WinFS coverage, tho. But, all-in-all, it was a pretty good article. It wasn't too technical, tho, so if you have any IT [semi-]savvy people that don't know much about Longhorn (i.e. managers), this would be a good place to start.
Here are a few of my predictions...
Indigo
I expect to see Sun trying to tie Java into Indigo somehow. I only think this will happen because of the strong standards-based support that Indigo is tied to, however. I think Sun is going to try to make the most out of the relationship between itself and Microsoft. That is, if they can hold onto Java that long...
WinFS
Who cares? No, really. Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is absolutely great, but besides some of the things that end users will be able to do, what will this provide for application developers? I'm probably missing something, but I just don't know. Then again, this is also why I haven't ever spent much time trying to get to know WinFS any better. I guess that's my homework for the next week: Figure out how WinFS benefits the developer.
Avalon
There seems to be a pretty strong cry for creating a standard UI markup language. I don't know if this is solely for web UIs, but I believe it's for both client and web-based interfaces. I admit, it would be nice to have one standard, but Microsoft has obviously made its opinion made. I think that Microsoft will lead the industry in getting this technology out on a widely used basis, but the more standards-based approach will surpass it (over time). Then, after let's say 5 years, Microsoft and industry will probably align with one awesome UI standard. Of course, by then I'm sure there will be other issues with it that will come up.
One thing that I think is funny is that, in a time where Microsoft is trying to play well with others, its actions with Avalon and VS05 Team System's modeling tools seem to be anti-friendly. They actually seem to be more like Microsoft about 5 years ago. Microsoft is trying to do their own thing and ignore everyone else. Yes, they have their reasons, but I just think that it's kind of against their recent actions and attitudes.