Newsmaker: At CES, Gates tells what a geek wants

LAS VEGAS--Even the world's richest man craves better home entertainment gear.

Bill Gates says his house is already wired to the hilt, with touch screens and high-definition displays. But, in the second installment of a two-part interview with CNET News.com, the Microsoft chairman admits he's ready to revamp his system to add "some vision and speech-type things."

What catches his eye at this year's Consumer Electronics Show? Gates says he's impressed by the number of high-quality, low-cost digital displays and the continuing spread of wireless technology.

As Windows Vista's debut looms, Gates takes measure of Windows XP's legacy to computing. And as he enters his final year full-time at Microsoft, he talks about his foundation and the work he'll be doing there.

Q: Every year at CES we see an array of futuristic PCs, and yet the types of computers that most people buy tend to be the same old desktops and notebooks. Do you think that's really going to start to change, and why?
Gates: Vista enables new capabilities. We didn't have the touch; we didn't have Media Center ready for the mainstream; we didn't have the SideShow, these smaller form factors. The hardware is improving a lot now, so you can get all the way down to a 6-inch display to let you read and get your full capabilities there. I do think we're seeing an expansion, and Vista is a big enabler.

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What will be the biggest change that Vista will bring to everyday computing?
Gates: Vista is part of the infrastructure that lets you do high definition, let's you do advanced wireless capability. It brings security up to a level that the PC is more trusted. For example, building in parental control that you had to buy something and configure that and so you never trusted yourself--did you do that right now? It's simpler because now it's part of the platform. So it drives things, some of which take time after Vista comes out, some of which are quite immediate. That's the coordination we had with our partners, and there are many, many more like it.

For me, the search function has made a big difference. It's built in; applications call those APIs. The visual experience (is) just a lot better for me than what I had before, so my machine that didn't have Vista...I felt bad when I used it.

When you look back at Windows XP, what do you think is the biggest change in computing that XP brought?
Gates: XP was part of this explosion of the Windows PC to the center of a lot of experiences. Before XP came along, portables were a very small percentage of what people did, so as we put the wireless capability in there, the standard stack in there, we did some things that let Wi-Fi really take off in a big way, that let portable computers take off.

We did much better power management in XP than we'd ever done before. So could we have had this portable explosion? No, we couldn't have.

Vista takes that to the next degree because portables are growing, and that's even before you get to some of the more breakthrough things like Tablet or the small ultramobile type form factor. So we can look back on every Windows release and say it ushered in something new. Here, you could say it ushers in 64-bit.

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But certainly at the server level...people are starting to push the limits, so if you don't relieve that memory pressure, people start to do very complex things like they did when we pushed the original 8086 limits, and now we've completely avoided that.

So there's quite a list you could pick. A lot of them have to do with new scenarios that were never being done before. RSS in the platform--at the time of XP, nobody knew what that was, why that was a big deal. Now I sit in IE and I mark things, and they just show up in Outlook. I take that for granted.

What types of things do you bring in via RSS?
Gates: I sign up to the kind of blogs that you might expect. I sign up to a lot of SharePoint sites that now can generate RSS notifications, so I'll be able to look and see, do I want to go and visit that? A lot of internal Microsoft sites where they're changing plans or schedules that I--I'm not going to pull them all, but I want a sense that I can do that.

I use my inbox rules to put these different things in folders and then, depending on what context I'm in, I'll go in one of those folders, just hit the urgent things, or go and hit some of the additional things. It saves me a lot of time. I see way more than I would otherwise.

The digital home is one of the big topics here this year. Since you have access to, I would imagine, any technology you want, I'm curious: What kinds of things do you have in your digital house that you think the average person will have in the coming years?
Gates: I can call up any movie, anywhere in the house. I can call up any of the music, and it's all just one totally integrated system. I have touch screens around. I have great high-definition screens. That system was actually done some time ago, so within the next couple of years, I'm going to take Media Center and rebuild it and take on another level of ambition.

I think I'll start to use some vision and speech-type things that would have been too advanced when I did the version that I have right now, so I want to get out there on the bleeding edge again.

Revamping the living room is one of the projects coming up for you?
Gates: Well, actually, I'll get other people to do the work, but what I did in my home helped drive some of those Media Center scenarios. Now I want to try and experiment with what the next frontier should be for those, and as screens become pervasive, as natural input becomes more practical, there's a lot more you can do. I'll show in my keynote tonight this idea of pervasive screens in the kitchen, in the bedroom, where the wall itself, in terms of the theme of the room or even picking what you're going to wear, seeing what's going on--as those screens are everywhere as you can talk and use cameras, it's really a lot different than a classic PC experience.

Outside of what Microsoft's doing, what types of things that we're going to see at CES or in consumer electronics, what's the biggest thing that's not involved with Microsoft that you think is making the biggest impact?
Gates: I think everything here does fit under these themes of connected and high fidelity.

More Newsmakers

[Dachi]

MS Robotics Studio is interesting

I think a combination of wireless technologies and robotics studio should lead to some interesting household products.

Instead of just having LCD panels around the house wirelessly networked, simple robotics allow for richer interaction with them.

Windows Home Server is probably intended more as a content delivery system for audio/video, but it could also be used to communicate with simple robotic products wirelessly so that they can offload processing to reduce costs.

Take the Roomba for instance, instead of a generic algorithm to decide where to vacuum, it could use a cheap laser range finder to feed numbers back to a central server that can use the measurements to create maps of the rooms and calculate the robots position in the house.

The server could then use more complicated algorithms to determine where the robot needs to vacuum and sent it simplified instructions.

Ditto for a toy like Robosapien, with offloaded processing it could have speech and facial recognition.

There are tons of possibilities for something like this that I nobody has thought of yet, but with sumulation lowering entry costs to design robotics, and the ability to form a tech savvy community around a platform like this, I think it is as interesting as anything else being showcased at CES this year.

[jabbotts]

but why Microsoft?

But why Microsoft? They do have the robot-lego programming kit but I'd rather something with full transparency and freedom. I don't see Microsoft, by patent or intentions, being less restrictive.

I'll fully admit that I'm biased though after many years of running up against Microsoft's intentional limitations and lock-in strategies.

[microshizzle]

gee k......

i wonder how the bill gates foundation thing is going while he's busy promoting microshizzle =)

[garrywdm]

gates envy

At least he's not faking documents to fatten his pay cheque. Instead Gates employs people to give his money away

[jabbotts]

not worth discussion

I'm guessing that the foundation is more than two people and that they have a management structure in place reporting in regularily while he continues is exit from Microsoft's day to day as per schedual.

It's really not worth discussion though unless your just looking for things to complain about; and I'd be the first to be making noise if there was something to complain about.

Besides, consider the potential good he can do. Even if he did nothing more than walk around throwing money at problems; that alone would make a noticable difference on a global scale. We all hate him and company because of the application of a highly trained strategic mind applied to business. If he applies that same focus, determination and strategic analysis to really solving problems without demanding that every solution be patented under the Microsoft brand then there's a huge potential for good to be done.

If he's just looking for new early-entry markets to brand and exploit then we have a different situation entirely.

Proove us wrong Bill; do some real humanitarian good without employing Microsoft products.

[garrywdm]

Go Robo Studio

The studio is brilliant. Well done MS. Thinking ahead in leaps and bounds

[onesoftware]

Vista #1

A question was asked on C/net, ?What will you say when you see the new Windows Vista?? It just popped into my head, that thought, and I laughed so hard tears fell in my hilarity.



Could you please tell Mr. Gates my thought? I think it would make a fabulous slogan for his New Windows Vista.



This is the Image and thought I saw in my head. A man standing there with a computer case lopsided on his head and him looking out the slot where the cd player is. The slot is larger. You can see his eyes. He is dressed in leather. There is a patch over the left corner of the computer case, an eye patch, a big one, a square one. It has 2 black shoe strings on it and wrapped around the computer box. The computer boxes? lights are blinking on and off. The case is worn and damaged banged up. The man?s legs are spread apart standing like a macho man. He has black boots, black leather pants, black leather vest. It really should be Mr. Gates, but if he can?t do it, a body builder will do as second choice. Then the man pulls his hand from his vest and says with a big full grin, ?ASTA LA VISTA ?BA-----BY,? as he shows the new Product. The sound of the New Vista is heard from the computer monitor. Miraculously the monitor kicks the man out of the computer box. The computer is not blinking or making clunky noises. Isn?t that phrase ?ASTA LA VISTA BABY?? funny? The monitor(it sees, you know)snaps in the ultimate Vista Cd and walla. ALl sounds normal... mmm mmm good! YES, MR. GATES!
I want a free computer also loaded with it all!
Thankyou. Taking my pretty bow and curtsy. ha ha

Well I sure had a good laughed, since it is the greatest of them all and so promising.

Have a good day.



Heidi Bujak

[alek_nedic]

There is a patch

http://www.analogstereo.com/volvo_v70_owners_manual.htm

[enscorp]

Mr Gates, Please contact me.

Mr. Gates,

With all due respect to your success and vision I ask that you contact me regarding the next "Bleeding Edge" communications technology. I have at least one engineer of MS products (C#, ASP.NET, etc..) who can help us deliver a working prototype fairly quickly. Please deliver any information possible on a serious submission for business partnership consideration to [e-mail]

Sincerely,

R. Frey
Enterprise Network Solutions
D.B.A. (3N5)