For the previous 10 decades, the top part of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates; Customer Electronics Present keynotes, to me, have already been the futuristic look-aheads.I haven;t been as wowed through the partnership offers set to kick in over the next 12 months or so. Nor the new PCs, units, software program (and, as of late, companies) which have just began to ship or will in a make any difference of months. But I always looked forward to the way-out there,
Office 2010 Pro Plus, long-term,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, pie-in-the-sky computing situations that created audiences oooh and aaah.At this year;s keynote — which will be Gates; last (at least for that foreseeable future) — there were not several hints about Microsoft;s view of the coming digital decade. Instead, the focus was on sales tallies for Windows Vista (100 million retail copies sold); Xbox Live members (10 million); Xbox 360 gaming consoles (17.7 million sold to date); Windows Live users (420 million worldwide) and MediaRoom IPTV setboxes installed (1 million).In part, the de-emphasis on what Microsoft envisions for your longer expression may have already been intentional. Microsoft may have wanted to give Gates a chance to bask in the glow of keynotes of decades past. Or perhaps it;s a sign of the new Microsoft: One where discussions of futures are going to be severely curtailed.The only truly futuristic technology that Gates showed during his hour-plus CES appearance was a piece of visual-recognition software program under development by Microsoft Research that, some day, may be integrated into cell phones and other devices. Gates pointed a black-box mock-up device at faces and the software program instantly recognized and identified them, providing all kinds of related information (like how much money they owe you). Point the device at a theater and it provided the theater name,
Windows 7 64 Bit, address and a list of movies playing. Gates showed a slick, 3D interactive interface that would act as the central focal point for all of the visual data stored on a device,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, organizing it into browseable categories.I was hoping Gates would pull a Steve Jobs and say at the incredibly end of his remarks, “We have one further thing…” and show off Windows Live “Horizon” or a sneak peek of Windows Mobile 7, or the “Pink and Purple” project;s Zune phone, or — heck, even just a glimpse of “Fiji.”But nope. That was all,
microsoft Office 2010 Serial, folks.What did you think of Gates; last CES hurrah?