Office 2010 Pro Key Microsoft at CES The elephant

Microsoft didn;t present off its rumored Courier tablet at CEO Steve Ballmer;s keynote on January 6 in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as I predicted earlier within the day. Nor did Ballmer share any info on Windows Mobile seven, Windows Live Wave 4, Windows 8 or significantly of something else that enthusiasts had been hoping to hear/see.As an alternative, Ballmer did talk up a number of the lately debuted Windows seven PCs,Office 2010 Pro Key, a new Game Room retro-game arcade on Xbox Reside (which had been formerly rumored),Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, a soon-to-be-released Windows Mobile six.five phone from HTC/T-Mobile and a forthcoming HP slate tablet (that;s nothing like Courier) in the event. Oh yeah… and he confirmed what he let slip months ago: That Project Natal, Microsoft;s next-generation gaming controller,Office Pro Plus 2007 Key, is coming in 2010.Once Microsoft officials finally started confirming previously today that Ballmer wasn;t going to show off Courier, there was quite a bit of speculation that he might say a thing — anything — new about Windows Mobile seven. Nope. All we know is the next most likely venue for anything WM-7-related is the Cellular World Congress in Barcelona in February. (We also do know that Microsoft is going to say a little something about WM7 for developers at its Mix 2010 demonstrate in mid-March, since they;ve put up a session placeholder for it on the Mix site.)After the power-related delay, which pushed back the start of Ballmer;s keynote by about 30 minutes, what did he say that caught my ear (via the streaming Webcast)? He used the words “screens” and “cloud” right off the bat, in case you had any doubts that Microsoft was going to continue to bang the “three screens and the cloud” drum in the new year.He also mentioned one of Microsoft;s new favorite buzzwords, NUI (natural user interface), which means everything other than QWERTY input: Voice, touch, gestures, etc.Microsoft has inked an agreement with HP to make Bing the default search engine, and MSN the default homepage on HP PCs in 42 countries.He showed prototypes of three slate PCs (including the aforementioned HP one) that are all Windows 7 based and due to ship in 2010. The other two were from Pegatron and Archos.He shared a couple of new Windows stats: On Black Friday, retailers sold 63 percent more PCs than they did the year before. And the 2009 holiday season saw greater than 50 percent year-over-year growth for Windows PC sales,Office Pro 2007 Key, Ballmer said, quoting NPD. Maybe Microsoft would be better off just relinquishing the CES keynote kick-off spot. Yes, I know there;s a renewed focus in the company on proving Microsoft has customer mettle. But if you;re going to back up that claim, you need to bring to CES some things people are actually excited about. Not version 2.0 of MediaRoom (Microsoft;s IPTV software,Office Home And Business 2010 Key, if you;ve forgotten).It says a whole lot that one of the biggest new announcements in Ballmer;s keynote was the Blio e-reader software from Ray Kurzweil and Baker & Taylor. The software supports full color graphics, multiple voices, note-taking, video and several other features that may make it useful within the textbook room, in particular. OK, OK — that HP slate looked nice, too… It was running the Kindle for PC software in Ballmer;s demo.I know there are plenty of folks who think Microsoft;s noticeable move away from pre-announcing strategies and technologies is a good one that will better help the company meet expectations (and emulate a couple of its competitors). But continuing to re-announce formerly unveiled technologies — even in new bottles — doesn;t create much excitement.Do you think Microsoft would have been better served showing a sneak peek of Windows Cellular seven or Windows 8/IE 9 at CES? Or do you think the elephants inside the space don;t really overshadow the actual technologies Microsoft that are already shipping and/or closer to delivery?