COMMENTARY-- For the past decade, Microsoft has worked diligently to bring Windows together, culminating in the creation of the Home and Professional versions of Windows XP. But there are forces pulling these two operating systems apart. Over time, I predict the two will head in very different directions.

Caveat: I don't think Microsoft is far enough down this path to have made any sort of a decision, so I'm not revealing any secrets here. I know the company is thinking about Windows in a post-XP world--they obsess over the future of Windows. But what, if anything, they've decided is known only to top MS executives.

What we do know is this: In the immediate future, there's a Service Pack release coming this fall. It will bundle together all the fixes released so far, as well as some new stuff, the precise nature of which still isn't clear. I'm not expecting significant new functionality, but we could see the Tablet PC feature set as part of this release.

Microsoft would be wise to use Windows XP SP1 to provide the world with some concrete evidence of what's been accomplished so far in pursuing its Trustworthy Computing initiative. But I'm not sure how the company should accomplish this.

Trustworthy Computing will not, by the way, be a major selling point for some future Windows release. People expect their computers to be secure and deduct points when it isn't, rather than adding points because it is. Windows XP, for example, is much less crashy than Windows 9x. While that ought to be a major selling point (it is to me), most people just take it for granted.

After the service pack, the next major version of Windows--code-named Longhorn--is due sometime in late 2003/early 2004. I'm betting on later rather than sooner. Microsoft has not revealed a great deal about this release, although it's pretty clear it will be fully .Net-enabled. Longhorn should also be a "trustworthy" operating system; Microsoft should hold the ship date until it is.

I'm also expecting the first concrete evidence of Microsoft's eHome initiative--introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year--to appear in Longhorn, in the form of things like personal video recording. In the meantime, expect some eHome technologies to start appearing on select PCs from select OEMs by this fall.

Today, Windows XP Professional has all the features of the home version, plus the networking and management features you need in an enterprise environment. But in the future, operating systems are likely to diverge again. Some of the advanced features of a new home version of Windows--things the company isn't talking about yet but can be imagined--just don't make sense in a business. And there will be pieces of .Net and security that don't make sense at home.

Furthermore, as we learn to do things like ship video around the house over a wireless connection and add non-PC information appliances and home entertainment equipment in a home net, networking will become an integral part of any "home" OS.

It is also possible that Microsoft will turn some of these new features into optional services or add-ons purchased on a per-desktop basis on top of the base Windows pricing. Companies may opt to have only the features they really need installed on any given desktop.

THE POINT BEING, the Windows of the future that I have on my computer won't necessarily be the same as the one you have on yours. Sure, they will run the same applications, but they could run them in very different ways. The amount and kind of .Net support will likely be different from one machine to the next, and I certainly expect to see different networking technologies for homes and offices.

Sure, Microsoft could just put out an even more bloated operating system with even more optional pieces and switches, one that's even more complex than the OS we use today and fraught with even more inconsistencies and conflicts. But I don't see Microsoft doing this.

More likely is a pared-down Windows, to which features are added on an as-needed basis. Most of us would purchase Windows in one of two (or several) standard configurations--a home version and a business version, perhaps--and then mix-and-match the other options we need.

There's an interesting wild card here: The nine states that didn't settle the antitrust case against Microsoft want a federal judge to order the company to release a stripped-down version of Windows--a so-called Windows Lite--to which other vendors could add features. The pared-down Windows described above would probably meet that requirement.

But regardless of what the judge, the OEMs, or other third-parties do, I can't imagine the end result will be much less a Microsoft product than it is today. More likely, as the different components of the OS become even more interdependent, adding non-Microsoft components will likely create more problems for users than it solves.

Of course, this is all just crystal ball gazing on my part. Even if I'm right on the essentials, I don't expect to be right on the particulars. But I do expect that--if only to accommodate new technology and new business models, and maybe even the whims of a federal judge--tomorrow's Windows will be very different than today's.

What do you think the next Windows will look like? What do you want it to look like? TalkBack to me below.

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