CES 2009 Microsoft Keynote: Windows 7, Live, and More
The keynote at CES didn't seem to suffer much from the lack of Bill Gates, who turned speaking duties over to Steve Ballmer. After an intro by the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association Steve Shapiro, Ballmer came and delivered three takeaways: Microsoft's increased focus on embedded devices, their recent upgrades and integrations with their Live service, and of course, the announcement of the opening of the Windows 7 beta.
The talk about embedded devices dealt largely in abstracts, with frequent references to "convergence" and "the cloud". But the reality was a little more modest, with the only real takeaway being an announcement of Live Search being integrated into Verizon phones.
Live itself got a fair amount of attention, with the showing off of Live Essentials: a bundle of an updated Messenger, Mail, and photo gallery. In addition, Ballmer announced a partnership with the popular social networking site Facebook, with the key benefit being that you can update Live or Facebook and the posts will populate to both services. Live Essentials will be bundled with many Dell computers beginning this year.
Of course the highlight of the night was the announcement of the opening to the public of the Windows 7 beta. Though the beta has been available online in...less-than-legal channels for several weeks, it's now been made available to MSDN, TechBeta, and TechNet customers. Going beyond mere user friendliness, he notes that it contains concrete features like touch sensitivity, extended battery life, fewer (annoying) alerts, Live Essentials, and more intutivite networking.
Ballmer walked the crowd through some of the GUI features of Windows 7, such as multitouch, the new Jump Lists, the updated taskbar, and Window Snap. The crowd seemed to respond positively, likely relieved to see the potential end of the seemingly long, dark era of Vista performance problems.
After the requisite brief but positive discussion of the Zune, and the introduction of Codu (a sort of "baby's first software development kit" for kids to create their own community games), Ballmer turned to developments with the Xbox 360: particularly the integration of Netflix and the launch of a "primetime" channel on Xbox Live, where people can participate in casual social games on the service at set times. The demo in this case was of a game show, a version of "1 vs. 100".
Lots of stuff on the plate, but it's easy to imagine that most of the post-keynote-cocktail discussions are going to center around Windows 7. It spent a long time in the dark, surrounded by promises and the rare screenshot, but now people are going to get a chance to kick the tires and see for themselves whether Microsoft has managed to produce their own "Vista-killer".
--Jon D.
adam hartung on January 08, 2009 at 09:14 PM
How can anyone be excited by an announcement, after 2 years, to fix the weaknesses in a product that was launched two years late? Microsoft's Windows 7 is more of the same, and that's not going to drive sales. Read more at http://www.ThePhoenixPrinciple.com