Gates at WinHec 2007: Windows Server 2008, Rally, Home Server and More
I’m out at LA this week for the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC 2007), the 15th year of such events.
My colleagues have blogged about the keynote from Bill Gates, focusing on Gates’s discussion of Vista sales here, but to me there were a few highlights.
As usual, much of the flash came in the demos. First, Gates showed off a number of new portable devices, ranging from tablet PCs, to notebooks with “sideshow” displays to ultramobile PCs like the HTC Shift. These are cool, though for the most part, the mainstream notebook hasn’t really deployed these new technologies. I expect we’ll see more of this as the technologies mature, but I’m still not convinced that the “ultramobile PC” will be mainstream. I wrote a bit about this last week.
I was impressed by the “Windows Rally” demo, which showed Windows recognizing a variety of different devices just as they were plugged into the network, ranging from routers to picture frames to wireless cameras to 802.11n media bridges connected to an Xbox used as a media center extension
Gates talked about putting the remote media experience into all sorts of more devices including CE devices and HDTVs, which is a great idea. But some of this I expected by now – the ability to use an existing PC as a media center extender; or an inexpensive media center extender device. To that extent, I was a bit disappointed.
Gates called the technology “as important as USB” and in many respects, he’s right. Making the devices work securely and easier is really important. But it’s equally important that the device drivers really are stable and allow for all sorts of new features.
Other demos focused on server software that is currently in beta. A product manager showed off Windows Home Server and talked about how it allowed every PC on the home network to be automatically backed up; to be managed from one computer; and to share data; with the data you want accessible to other devices over the Internet. Yep, I want one.
Gates announced that Windows Server 2008 would, not surprisingly, be the official name of “Longhorn” server. The demo here focused on security, preventing a laptop from connecting to the network unless it had security software on it; and preventing a USB flash drive from connecting to a computer, while still allowing a USB wireless mouse. This is important, of course, though I think thngs like 64-bit support and virtualization may be even more important.
He finished by looking ahead. He talked about how we are in the middle of Middle of an address space transition to 64-bit. Virtually all PC processors will be 64-bit by next year, and this will enable lots of memory for things like visual information, business intelligence information; and In-memory database technology. But it does require a change in drivers; and he was forthright in suggesting that the industry is only about halfway through this transition. It feels to me like it’s not quite that far along, but it certainly will be very significant.
He also talked about “natural user interface” talking about how important he thinks touch, pen, and voice input will be in the future. In particularly, he singled out work on Chinese and Japanese pen input. He talked about new form factors (some of which will be driven by the new user interfaces); and talked about unified communications, where the “phone is going to be the PC and the PC is going to be the phone.”
Finally, he talked about “The ‘Live’ Era” of software plus services, which combines computing services delivered over the Internet with data cached locally, so the applications can use the full richness of Windows client and local storage. It’s a very compelling vision, but as always the proof will be in the deliverables, as many other companies are moving down similar paths.
In sum, Gates pressed the audience – the “partners” – to implement Microsoft’s visions in a lot of different areas, but it all game back to making hardware work better with Windows.