Paul Thurrott got Slashdotted for his offhand comment about Longhorn: “This has the makings of a train wreck.”
Well, I noticed that the post was time-stamped 6:24 AM, and started out “I hate mornings.” So read the rest of the commentary accordingly.
On a more substantive note, let’s put things in perspective. The Longhorn build handed out here at WinHEC is for people who write device drivers for a living. It wasn’t put together to dazzle Windows fans or, for that matter, to be used on production systems. It’s got lots and lots of rough edges. The bits and pieces I’ve seen here look interesting and unfinished. But I’m going to reserve more substantive opinions until Beta 1 comes out this summer. And even then I’m setting my expectations appropriately, because Microsoft has already made it clear that most of the whizzy consumer-friendly features won’t appear until Beta 2.
This is awfully early to be making any definitive judgments.
Ed Bott 
Actually, it’s not too early… it’s too late. We’ve already “seen” one early Alpha of Longhorn, and this one seems to be more of a step backwards than forwards (from THAT).