InsideMicrosoft

Bill Gates CES 2007 Keynote LIVE!

UPDATE 11:05: Gates thanks everyone and says goodbye.

UPDATE 11:03: Bill talks about a home Microsoft built on its campus, Microsoft’s Home of the Future. There’s a bus stop with a large screen that shows you which bus is coming, and mentions nearby restaurants, lets you make a reservation, buy something and send a package, all connecting through your phone. Next, he goes in the kitchen, talks about putting screens everywhere, projecting a screen on the kitchen counter. The counter recognizes things you put on it through RFID, helps you construct a recipe, and guides you through making a meal. Next, he moves to the bedroom, controlling it through a tablet PC. The wall has images projected on it, lets you mess around and put things on it, run a menu on your wall, show a video aquariam running on the wall, play video games on the wall, get emails on the wall, or something simpler. He does this every year, and I think we still haven’t caught up to what he showed us five years ago.

UPDATE 10:55: Bill is back. He talks about the new deal with Ford, brings out a Ford exec. Called “Sync”, it works with phone and music players, completely exclusive. Integrates all electronic devices into the vehicle, accessing full voice command capability of your phone over Bluetooth, with the whole phone book and ring tones over the cards audio system. You can maintain a call when entering and exiting a vehice. It will read your text messages back to you. Accepts nearly all portable music players, portable storage devices, flash drives and zip drives. Fully upgradeable, so future proof. They’re rolling it out affordably, and on a dozen Ford cars this year, including the Ford Focus.

UPDATE 10:47: They are showing off better IPTV, with instant channel changing, improved channel browsing (including picture-in-picture that shows off the channels you are switching to), video on demand. Now, IPTV can run on the Xbox 360! Oh! You can chat with your friends on Xbox Live while watching TV.

UPDATE 10:45: Four ways to get HD: (1)HD-DVD player, which is selling out like crazy. (2) Windows Media Center, with 30 million copies of Media Center out there. (3) XBox Live Video Marketplace. Adding today: Lion’s Gate, for even more content. (4) IPTV!

UPDATE 10:41: Says Xbox Live has 5 million members, which is why they want to bring it to Windows, and Lisa comes out to show off Live on Windows Vista. Xbox Live Marketplace games are going to be available on Windows Vista, with games changed slightly for Windows, but running on the PC and playing with other players on Xbox Live. The interface is a lot like that on Xbox Live, with all of the community features of Xbox Live available on Windows Vista. Games that will work on this include Uno, Shadowrun and Halo 2. 3 billion hours of gaming so far.

UPDATE 10:36: Talks games, mentioning 2.7 million copies sold of Gears of War. There are over 150 titles, with 300 by the end of the year. One title above them all: Halo3 Shows the Halo 3 commercial from a few weeks ago.

UPDATE 10:34: Now, Xbox 360. Says 10.4 million consoles soled by December 31, half a million ahead of projections.

UPDATE 10:33: Mentions games for Windows, notes that people still buy more PC games than any other kind. Shows off games on Windows Vista. Geometry Wars is coming to PC!

UPDATE 10:31: Talks up Windows Mobile. Mentions that they outsell Blackberry.

UPDATE 10:27: Robbie Bach comes out to talk about Connected Entertainment. Starts with music, says Microsoft is still commited to Urge and other partners, but also doing a different thing with Zune. Says “We are the number 2 player already”, “we are on track to ship a million copies of Zune”.

UPDATE 10:25: The interruption was for some new HP PC they can’t show the web. Talks about Home Server connecting remotely to files, backing things up, central storage, easy to grow storage. He’s brief, but I have all the details, baby! HP is the lead partner, but others will be building them.

UPDATE 10:22: Bill Gates mentions Windows Home Server!

This is my big scoop, and the stream is interrupted. Never fear, but I have all the details, just read em at this link:

http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/01/07/exclusive-windows-home-server-in-detail/

UPDATE 10:20: Montage of cool PCs.

UPDATE 10:19: Gates comes back, talks about peripherals and Sidebar Gadgets and WPF and tablets and portables and briefly mentions SideShow.

UPDATE 10:14: Shows off Dream Scene, another Ultimate Extra, that does full motion desktops! Any video can be a motion desktop.

UPDATE 10:13: Shows off Groupshot, a new Windows Vista Ultimate Extra, which lets you take elements from different, similar pictures, taking the good stuff from each to make a perfect photo. Also showed off photo gallery.

UPDATE 10:11: Shows off Video On Demand coming to Media Center through online video stores.

UPDATE 10:10: Shows off Media Center, with a new feature called SportsLounge, which shows you real time FOX Sports stats and scoreboards above and below games while you watch them. You can set it to track specific teams, fantasy players, set up alerts when players in your fantasy league comes to bat. WOW!

UPDATE 10:08 : Shows off Word’s features for better looking documents, then Windows Live Maps 3D maps. He controls the maps with an Xbox 360 controller, flying down the Las Vegas strip. They are also laying down real time traffic information.

UPDATE 10:04: Shows off Vista’s search. It can search not only on the PC, but across the home network. That’s new! Also shows off Shadow Copy to restore previous versions.

UPDATE 10:03: Justin Hutchinson comes out to demo Vista, and promises things they haven’t shown before.

UPDATE 10:02: Mentions how Office was a risk, but one that needed to be taken.

UPDATE 9:58: Gates begins on Windows Vista, saying it is their highest quality release ever, driven by feedback and testing.

UPDATE 9:55: Bill does version 7000 of his “Digital Lifestyle” speech.

UPDATE 9:52: Bill says he might talk about infectious diseases after he retires more than software. Some people would call Microsoft an infectious disease (not me!).

UPDATE 9:51: Begins with video montage. Zune, Vista, WinMobile, Xbox 360. And in comes Bill Gates. Woot!

UPDATE 9:49: Finally! It begins.

Update 9:47: They only brought two awful songs? What, does no one at Microsoft have an iPod?

Update 9:39: This music sucks, I want to die, they’re nine minutes late…

90 Minutes.

(photo by Major Nelson)

January 7th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | 4 comments