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Fuzzy Logic Gates CES 2008 keynote: Pieces of the Microsoft puzzle
Fuzzy Logic Gates CES 2008 keynote: Pieces of the Microsoft puzzle | Gates CES 2008 keynote: Pieces of the Microsoft puzzle |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 07 January 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 Bill Gates said that 100 million ‘people’ are using Windows Vista, but didn’t elaborate as to whether the claimed 100 million figure was made up from both sales of volume licenses to business alongside sales of new desktop and notebook computers, and sales of retail boxes. Featured Whitepaper
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Aside from briefly looking at a couple of ‘fashion notebook PCs’ sporting thin and light designs, Gates also spent some time with the Surface PC, and talking about interfaces of speech, touch, vision and gestures which would ultimately see users abandon the keyboard and mouse. Robbie Bach demonstrated a new version of ‘TellMe’, an integrated voice-and-visual mobile service combined with GPS to call a web service, say ‘movies’ and have a list of the closest theatres and showing movies displayed on your mobile phone’s screen. Bach also demoed voice-activated technology for the car, including the Sync car-computer system designed by Microsoft and Ford. Expected to be installed into 1 million cars by 2009, the system brings advanced voice controlled computing and communications functionality into a car environment, and has been enhanced with a new ‘911 Assist’ feature that connects drivers with emergency services in the case of an accident or emergency. The keynote ended with a Guitar Hero playoff that was meant to happen between Robbie Bach and Bill Gates, playing ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. Instead, Guitar Hero champ Kelly Law-Yonne played the song on ‘Expert’ mode for Bach, while Gates wheeled out legendary guitarist Slash, who performed part of the song live on his electric guitar instead. Visit Microsoft’s website http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/default.mspx to watch it via streaming video, where you can see Bill Gates’ funny ‘last day’ video, his demonstrations with the Surface PC, Slash performing everything else described in this article and more. The Guitar Hero face off may have signalled the end of Bill Gates’ keynote at CES 2008, but one thing’s for sure: we haven’t heard the last of William H Gates III, not by a long shot! |
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