Virtual Report from CES


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While most of the 7000 media and analysts covering CES did their best to summarize yet another boring Bill Gates rehash keynote speech, the best summary showed up in my in-box as a memo from pad-computer maven and Microsoft critic, man on the street. Chris Coulter. Worth a quick read.

Short and Sweet Wrap-Up

Tablet PC – More Gates yabbering about his pet toy, all talk no action. I was a heavy believer 4 years ago, lost my religion however. Want to worship again, but then this thing called ‘reality’ is out there.

360 – Yeah yeah, whatever. It would help if people could freaking actually BUY them. Money-losing rathole, now with an additional HD-DVD upgrade option needed. The Live strategy will backfire, don’t place all chips on that.

Media Center with DirectTV – Score one. That’s the one smart move. Tho, with Direct TV PVR, umm why do you really need Media Center? And cable companies themselves doing PVR functionality. Media Center too geek toy.

Vista – Umm yeah? Rehash. So? Rehash. Yeah? Oh really, so?

Mobile – What? Bit player, hitching ride on a Palm device, another division forever treading water.

VIIV – Ummm, marketing spazzing up Intel, eh? Never mind that Cell chip.

Portable Media Centers – Oh do be serious. I bet the people that own these are but in the dozens. An iPod this is not.

Future home tech rot – Yeah yeah, maybe if like Gates, rich beyond dreams, and have time to tinker with all this lucid dreaming. Otherwise pay no heed.

HD-TV – Taking credit for the HD? Saying 360 the primary thrust spurring HD adoption? What arrogance. No doubt real consumer electronics companies none too happy with Microsoft pissing in their pools and stealing the credit.

Urge and Starz! – MS-MTV? Content partnerships, the backing of Microsoft means a sure fire death, if going by history. Ironic timing, on the death of MSNBC, they get into content again, songs and movies. Blah. DOA.

related link:
SJ Mercury Summary of Speech



  1. Luís Camacho says:

    I like the 360, there are some games that catched my eye: Perfect Dark Zero, Tomb Raider Legend, Dead or Alive 4, Resident Evil 5, Project Gotham Racing 3, Sonic the Hedgehog and probably others and yes I know most of these aren’t released yet.
    Plus the console looks nice and neat and finally the controller rocks (the Pc version drivers suck but whatever…). So stop mocking the 360 cause it seems the only next-gen console worth a dime.

  2. Ahmer says:

    I hate bill gates…

  3. Johnny says:

    Yeah it was somewhat of a snooze fest but itll be better than that inevitbly god awful rumoured dialouge between the simpsons and steve jobs yet all of apples products can be described in the same way please kill fanboyism

  4. Jeff says:

    Well, to be fair, I bought an HD because of the 360. I know others.

    I don’t understand why people hate Bill Gates so much. Microsoft has done some stupid things, but as a developer I’m thrilled to death with their tools and technology in the last four years.

  5. Luís Camacho says:

    “Well, to be fair, I bought an HD because of the 360. I know others.”
    If you are short on money you can use your monitor. That more than HD.

    “I don’t understand why people hate Bill Gates so much. Microsoft has done some stupid things, but as a developer I’m thrilled to death with their tools and technology in the last four years.”
    For no good reason, they don’t have a life. While MS did nasty things so would do anyone else if they were in their position and had such power, if Apple or Be or whatever was in place of MS they would do just the same or even worse.

  6. Presi says:

    I’ve nothing against Bill Gates, but he’s freaking boring! I had to force my self, more than once, to pay attention to what he was talking about.

    Gee Bill! talk less and show more stuff! Or maybe that was the trick to avoid any blue screens… do you guys remember last year keynote? That was awesome.

    Besides the borning speech, some Vista features look cool.

  7. I agree with Jeff. The Dot Net Framework and programming environment is the best I’ve ever used. But I may be jaded — I started programming in main frame assembly language during the prehistoric era.

    I don’t understand why people let Apple and Steve Jobs get away with stuff that Gates would be pilloried for. I probably need a course in Religious Studies to figure that one out.

  8. Moe Lasses says:

    Regarding keynote.

    This is it? 40+ Billion dollar company, and this is the cutting edge, ground breaking new things it can muster?

    Is it me? Where is the innovation?

    With Kudos for getting Xbox360 sorta out the door aside…..If Microsoft is a reflection of Gates and his execs current best efforts, then “boring” as mentioned by previous poster(s), really does come to mind.

    I dunno, maybe nimble navigation of semi exciting things is too much to ask from the big lumbering ship MS.

  9. KC says:

    360 is a ‘money-losing rathole’. Hmmm. Somehow I doubt that. But hate on, if you must. I swear, the way some people comment on the 360, you’d think it was the console version of the Gizmondo…

    I’m willing to bet that the 360 will do just fine this year. Good thing Gates is not forcing you to buy one so I guess your rants mean next to nothing.

  10. Scott says:

    KC, you can’t make money on something that costs more to make than you are asking in your selling price. Microsoft loses money on every xbox they sell. “Doing fine” by your definition means more money out the door for Microsoft. They can only hope to make money back on game titles.

  11. Mark says:

    All of these things are quite interesting. It is dumb to say what ever. Remember the part were it said that the Media Center is geeky. Well John, i’m pretty sure that the person who sent you the e-mail is a geek himself . (by the way, that means no offence to you friend)

  12. andrews says:

    It called selling at a loss, people. And that what all the console makers are doing these days. Just wait till the ps3 comes out. HUGE loss.

  13. Felion says:

    Quote: “if Apple or Be or whatever was in place of MS they would do just the same or even worse.”

    Ahem… Google?

  14. wonghong says:

    i had to struggle to keep my eyes open after 10mins of listening to the boring bill gates. not only it’s all talk, no show, i felt like listening to a bunch of business man hard selling how great their products but it was just not convinving enough, all the demos were just like what bill gates said, “only scratching the surface”…
    and boy what kind of powerpoint presentation is that?? is that what a $40billion company can come up with?? looked it was done by any high school kid. get serious microsoft, no matter how cool vista looks if thats what it produced in the end then i say it’s a load of bull.


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