I was really looking forward to liveblogging Bill Gates’ keynote address at WinHEC today. I’m sure a few other folks were as well. But a funny thing happened when I made it into the exhibit hall. Someone had decided to (1) Disable Wi-Fi in the exhibit hall (but not announce it – it’s amusing to watch people try every possible setting in the Windows XP wireless dialog box); (2) Squeeze the media (print and online) into a specially reserved section without any tables (why do you think they call them laptops?); (3) Provide no power outlets (thus giving my old Toshiba a real-world stress test).
So, you don’t get the benefit of my real-time analysis of BillG’s keynote, and instead you have to put up with my after-the-fact pontificating based on notes I wrote in the dark until my battery died with a half-hour to go. The last 30 minutes was just a blur.
It was a low-energy keynote, without a clever, self-effacing video clip like the ones that have become a hallmark of Gates appearances in recent years. The geeky audience got an appropriately geeky talk from the Alpha Geek, who had (in classic Microsoft style) three key messages to pass along:
- Windows for 64–bit platforms is here now. But it will be a while before it lands on your desktop. Windows XP 64–Bit Edition is a start, but it will be another year before 64–bit desktop PCs reach the mainstream and several more years before the 64–bit drivers and apps reach critical mass.
- Longhorn! Longhorn! Longhorn! Honest, this is not going to be Windows XP Service Pack 3. In fact, Gates got a big laugh when he said, after a particularly impressive Longhorn demo (and I’m paraphrasing), “Wow, every time I see one of these demos I ask why we can’t ship this right away.” Heh. I’ll have a lot more to say about Longhorn in a later post.
- All sorts of surprising new PC form factors are on the way. Tiny tablets. Well-connected media devices. Killer color printers (no kidding). All in the Longhorn timeframe, of course. I want one of everything.
Bonus geek content: The Longhorn demos were using build 5060. If you downloaded anything older via BitTorrent, you are so last week
(Good news: This afternoon’s sessions, including a fascinating presentation on new hardware designs, were held in rooms with tables! Bad news: Still no power strips. So I had to drag a chair to the back of the room, next to a power outlet, and blog from long distance. Good news: My battery is back up to 70% charge.)
Bloggers’ lunch tomorrow at Tulio. Don’t expect me to liveblog it.
Stay tuned.
Ed Bott 