I don't think that it will ever make much of a dent.

First, because it doesn't really offer much that JPG doesn't already have.

But ultimately, because it isn't free.  MS wants licensing fees.  That won't fly with most other companies, no matter how small, since they can use JPG for free.

MS business concept is just that: first they offer you a product for free, then they charge you for extensions and updates that you need later, when their support for the original version has stopped.

I seem to remember some cases a couple of years ago, when MS suddenly found out that they wanted to charge all camera manufacturers for the use of FAT16 or 32. It's something everybody took for granted as a standard that just existed, but it belongs to MS, and the moment they saw the chance to make money on it, they grabbed it.

What will happen with the new picture format, is that programmers will have to pay license fees that will eventually be paid by the end users: us.

Of course they will do anything to get Adobe in on the deal. It's the only way to secure success for the product. MS can afford to be kind for a couple of years, since they have a few dollars in the bank, but don't fool yourself believing that they are not going to make a profit on this. Of course they will.

They own the operating system (Windows), the web browser (IE), the office package (MS Office), and now they want to control the imaging market as well. The more control MS has, the less competition. The less competition, the easier it is for them to get away with mediocre products (like IE, Outlook and a couple of others).

Unfortunately, capitalism looks very much like communism when it reaches a certain level. It's full control and no choice for us small guys.

Sorry for the rant, but it's my honest opinion.

Jorgen

It is a very complicated matter, and unpredictable too. One of the main reasons for not succeeding may even be that people don't trust MS for consistency. Most users don't want annual updates that leaves their one year old software with limited usability at least, totally obsolete in the worst cases.

Still, this is one of the things that MS has become famous for. Just look at the number of operating system, all more or less incompatible, particularly with regards to user interface, that they have released since W95 (95, 98, NT3.5, NT4.0, 2000, 2003, ME, XP and now Vista).

I believe that one of the reasons that people still use fax, is that it's a universal standard. It's "stone-age" technology, and the quality is bad to say the least, but it works. Jpeg has many of the same advantages. Just compare it to movie formats, where everybody have managed to establish their own "standard", which are all more or less incompatible. I'm sure one of them is better than the others, but that doesn't help a lot when I need an abundance of media players on my Mac to play 80% of them.

It's maybe a positive sign that MS understood that they had to rename the format from Windows Something to HD, but as long as they are holding the rudder, they will have a hard time convincing the world that this is for the best of all involved. And the camera manufacturers may be the hardest to convince. Just look at Nikon's attempt to protect NEF, and then you have Sony. I'm surprised that they haven't tried to launch their own proprietary format that makes it impossible to view your photos other than on a Sony TV or mobile phone. Maybe even Sony have learned   

Where I live, there's an expression in the local language (Thai), "muan gann". It's usually translated into "same same but different" in English. Something like that.

well it might not be so dumb to convert your files to dng when you import them as i think the dng will be supported a lot long than for example the D30 files of canons first DLSR, or the current 1dsMarkII for that matter. (as all cameras have their own raw file format)

so far however, I haven't been bothered to use DNG files.

It would have been nice if more manufacturers would do like Pentax have done: let you choose between Pentax RAW and DNG from the camera. Their may be problems with data from certain sensors though, like the Fuji with two sets of sensors.