In real time: Engadget live from the Bill Gates 2005 CES Keynote at the Las Vegas Hilton
posted January 5th 2005 9:18PM
Hey everybody, so we're up in the press section of the Las Vegas Hilton Theater to see what Bill Gates has got
cooking in his keynote speech this year. Last year he gave us some deets on the Smartphone OS and Windows XP Media
Center Edition—today we're expecting some info on
Magneto, Microsoft's latest edition of the Windows Mobile
OS, convergence, and more biz on PlaysForSure. And who knows? No one ruled out the Xbox 2.
We'll be reporting in real time, so click on and reload for our up to the minute coverage!
Reload for the latest updates! All time reported PST.
6:25 - Waiting for speech to begin. This Gwen Stefani track is freaking catchy.
6:32 - Still waiting. Music is getting progressively worse. Fine, so Gates ain’t got the jamz.
6:41 - Gary Shapiro on stage to intro this biz.
6:42 - Ha! He just called Carly Fiorina the CEO of TI. Damn.
6:45 - Bill Gates about to come on. Who made these freaking interstitials?
6:49 - Conan O’Brien??? He’s not Bill Gates… but we rather prefer him.
6:53 - “NBC produced a made for TV movie about gadgets…” Oh, really? “Steve Ballmer is going to be played by Terry
Bradshaw.” No kiddin’! “Steve Jobs will be played by Ringo Starr.” “Jeff Bezos will be played by… an emu.” “Paul Allen
will be played by Janet Reno.” “And finally, the man of the hour… Bill Gates will be played by Millhouse from the
Simpsons.”
6:58 - Conan: “What can we expect from the digital lifestyle?” Gates thinks the digital lifestyle is accelerating much
quicker than expected, but this is the decade that we can expect technology to be neglected.
7:03 - Microsoft’s strategy for consumers? Flexibility. Simplicity. “A single remote control.” (Obviously referencing
Media Center’s wide range of content delivery capabilities.)
7:05 - Gates playing with the iRiver H10; Conan takes it, puts it in his pocket. PlaysForSure is going to “drive music
forward,” and enables monthly subscriptions, which is the direction many people are speculating content is
moving.
7:09 - On digital photography. Gates blows off Conan’s joking around with a Nikon D2X: “Okay. That’s funny.” Wireless
slideshow not working. Whoa, this is kind of like the Media Center version of the Blue Screen of Death demo.
7:10 - On television. Choice, variety; the centerpiece is the Media Center. 1.4 million units. “Wait, I think we have
the slide show working.” And no, it’s not working. Conan: “Who’s in charge of Microsoft?! —oh.” “Wait, it’s actually
working.” Ha. It’s not.
7:20 - On Media Center and the Extender. New media center services with partnered content providers. Discovery
Channel, for instance, will now provide a rich media guide. Remotes: Philips, Logitech, Niveus have announced universal
remote control devices and support for Media Center. Also working with certification program for Media Center PCs; we
think this should make it a lot easier for OEMs to release Media Center PCs on the market instead of just the bigger
players. New MCE also enables remote record, which will work similarly to Tivo’s TCO (TiVo Central Online).
7:25 - Still on MC. Burn DVDs simply from within Media Center. Simplified media adapter capabilities by pulling
content off of other Media Center PCs or XP PCs (and, we assume, any other SMB/NetBIOS-enabled machines).
7:29 - Gates talking about IPTV: “maximum flexibility.” Yeah, no kidding, homes. They’ve been building on TV-software
technology for 12 years? Yo. Bell-South is rolling out IPTV, as well as SBC (via 2Wire?).
7:37 - SBC exec: IPTV has four simultaneous content streams to the home, including hi-def. “It’s about convergence of
voice, video, and data.” The “Video Store” has access to a library of programs for feeds; of course, it will be DRMed
out the yin-yang. With IPTV there is access to multiple angles and sports programs simultaneously, as well as remote
access and recording/programming via Windows Mobile-based devices. “I also want to point out that all these
demonstrations worked.” Har har.
7:45 - On Portable Media Center—partnership with MTV, who is working with the “Windows ecosystem”, and expected to
work with MS on PlaysForSure biz. Oh, and TiVoToGo (which we already told you quite enough about), but also the ability
move of content to PMC-enabled devices.
7:50 - Expect Oregon Scientific alarm clocks and other such smallish devices that will connect and pull data from the
SPOT network! Hype!
7:52 - On gaming: game development is going to be made simpler in ports between Xbox and the PC. Xbox hugely
successful in 2004, outsold PS2 (hey, it made our comeback of the year noms list!). Xbox live and Halo 2 stuff; you
guys are in the know. Gates believes that gaming is becoming a hugely social activity, especially enabled by high speed
connections. Some nerd is demoing a racing game ala 2000 replete with mods and customs.
7:55 - Whoa, a Blue Screen of Death on the Xbox! Damn, this is a Microsoft address!
7:57 - Conan’s racing Bill. Bill’s in the lead with his Ferrari, and Conan’s just crashed out in a crappy Buick. No
surprise there that Bill’s won the race. Conan’s framerate is also at about 2fps. Hot.
8:00 - Wrapping up: the future. Chips are doubling in speed, storage is doubling in size. We’re releasing our
technical limits; software will be more customizable, and purposeful for new audiences. Grandma’s gonna use a computer
in 2005? We’ll see, Bill. We’ll see.
The end. Good night East Coast, hello Digital Experience! Stay tuned…
that crappy buick is a Grand National. Fastest GM production car in '87 ... faster than the corvette.. and a tuners dream with the computer + turbo. Great straight line, not so hot in the twisties... crappy buick.. bah.. i'll take a GN over a ferrari any day. otherwise not impressed with much of what bill is talking about.. *yawn*
Anyone have a mirror of the video?
Microsoft has taken it down for now.
Is there a recording of the microsoft demonstration I can get?
It seems like Microsoft has remove the stream - dunno why :-)
When are people going to wake up and switch to macintosh.
the reasons not too (if you value your data, or your work on a computer is important) are dissapearing fast.
sure... games.... whatever, buy a fukking console, but for a computer that works buy a Mac.
earlier user comment:
"this is the first ummm "show" but bill is kind of a dick. they showed some cool stuff, but i dont' know, i just didn't like him. he should have been more funny. i mean come on, they had freakin Conan."
"shutup gates, let the Conan speak. lol. conan makes a joke, and gates just passes it off and continues on. he needs to play off conan"
(and a few more like it...)
Bill Gates is someone who "gets things done" (does useful stuff)... Conan is someone who makes stupid jokes. I get the impression Bill is just annoyed by the pointless joking around. Maybe having Conan on this presentation was just a bad idea.
I wanna see the whole video segment, the good with the ugly. Especially the part where they have blue screen crashes, mishaps, and when Bill Gates' cell phone crashed after taking Conan's photo. Where can I find it?
I don't like this link (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=1797705) here because it cleans out every malfunctions scenes during the CES presentation. I mean duh, the host is microsoft.com.
If you want to see the blue screen of death screen shot, you can get it at: http://www.solocomputerservices.com/news/articles/2005/gatesbombsatces.php
The whole video and some most interesting excerpts reencoded to open source XVID codec for portability, are available at http://linux.gda.pl/pub/media/CES_2005_Microsoft/
Marcin
can anyone give ma e mail add. to bill gate. i need to do some serious conversations with him. please help me. anyone. or
> "Bill Gates is someone who "gets things done" (does useful stuff)... "
He's obviously not doing a very good job of "getting things done" when something totally unacceptable like that happens that many times in a single show! Repeated testing works wonders for the wise out there. What a well-thought-out, professional display by Micro$haft...
I would be really pissed if I was Gates. Who ever managed that presentation/show is probably going to be looking for a new job, rightly so if you asked me. I don't think Conan mixed well w/ Gates either, he should have spoken with someone technical or better yet done it solo. I wouldn't just write off m$oft that fast... There was a lot of interesting things Gates said if you listened carefully. He's basically trying to provide a "platform" for all electronic devices, like he did with the pc. They may pull it off.