Bill Gates Speaks at Comdex, Highlights Win2000

Monday, April 17^th, Bill Gates came to Chicago to speak at the Comdex national computer convention. The uber-billionaire CEO of Microsoft was greeted by a standing room only crowd at the Arie Crown Theater of the McCormick Center.

Gates opened by noting the amazing progress that has been made in the computing world since last year. When Gates came to the convention one year ago, he was promoting the new Windows 98 personal computer operating system. One of the features touted by the product was the seamless, zero-effort installation of Plug’n’Play devices. To illustrate this feature, Gates had brought the project manager of the Windows 98 development team last year.

Chris Capossela, the PM, produced a USB sheet-feed scanner to show the product. While explaining that Windows98would install all drivers automatically as soon as the scanner was plugged in, Chris inserted the USB plug into the back of the system. An installation screen opened on the desktop and the infamous Blue Screen of Death immediately followed. Chris explained that some bugs still needed to be worked out.

This year, Gates welcomed Capossela back to prove that the scanner really would automatically install and run on Windows98. Capossela plugged the scanner in and held his breathe as the system installed. He immediately scanned an image and showed how design can be implemented to production.

The first new device Capossela introduced this year was an optically driven mouse called the Microsoft Mouse Explorer. The mouse is solid state (no moving parts to get dusty) with a titanium cover in matte silver color. The mouse uses an optical circuit with an LED for light to detect movement in place of the ball and roller used by computer mice until now. The optical circuit takes 1500 pictures a second, which makes it more accurate than a standard style mouse. In addition, the mouse no longer requires a mousepad. (In fact, in my own testing of a model, I was able to get fairly accurate movement on my arm as long as I held the device flat to my skin.) Capossela brought out an 8-foot model to show the audience while he used a scaled down version to show Gates. Finally, the mouse had two additional programmable buttons along the left side. A simple easily-accessible program is used to change the button’s abilities. (I was able to use the buttons for Forward and Back in Browser, then change to Cut and Paste within 10 seconds. My colleague, Mike, asked a representative if the control program is intelligent enough to know what functions the button perform by what is the active window. She didn’t say.)

Gates thanked Capossela and returned to his presentation. He said that in 1975, the dream was to get a computer on every desk and in every home. However, the dream has been re-evaluated. Now, we have come close to meeting that goal and we now want to be able to access information and affect the world from any geographical location or from any moment. In fact, the drive for computers combined with this desire for accessibility always has driven 25% of the computer market to be in laptop sales.

In addition, Gates spoke of connecting every device one owns to a network so that it can be activated or commanded from any location. (This electronic toaster and Internet-ready microwave have been previous inventions in this field. I have also seen promotional movies on a refrigerator that can tell when you need to buy new food and make the order for you, but these have been more sci-fi than fact until recently.) Gates said that we want this connectivity in the office or home, but we want it to be intuitive. We don’t want to have to make lots of commands to make a device perform. Gates used the phrase “Power where you want it” to explain this paradigm.

He spoke of being able to connect to your information and property from home, the office, personal mobile devices, or even from accessibility points on the street. To support this drive, he has been involved in the Universal Plug’n’Play initiative to include non-computer devices in the form of embedded systems.

Continuing on connectivity without effort, Gates explained that we can eliminate the need for a keyboard with speech-recognition on the telephone or hand-writing recognition devices. Hew said that all connectivity devices need to be palm-sized or smaller.

Currently, a person needs to do most computing and storage on a standard PC before transferring information to a palmtop (by serial connection or by holding the device to the screen) if one wants bring information on the road. Gates said that in the future, one will still need to use a central computer for processing since we desire a comfortable screen size to work, but the need to make a physical connection between devices will be outdated as wireless technology advances and size of electronics is reduced. Gates predicted that all screen devices will connect into the Internet by 2003.

Gates continued by noting that currently dial-up analog modem service is painfully slow on connection, not mobile, limiting in bandwidth. He addressed emerging data communications technologies such as cable modems, the DSL family of POTS-line connection, data through the power lines, semi-conductor industries, and satellite communications.

Gates switched gears with a video he brought of interviews conducted with people on the street. To ensure journalistic integrity, he employed Jay Leno to conduct the on-the-fly interviews asking such questions as “Do you know how the Internet works?” and “Do you know who Bill Gates is?”

Here are some interesting answers collected:

The Internet is powered by a little man who gets all the information and sends it back to you.

The e in e-mail stands for envelope.

Bill Gates is the president of Apple.

Bill Gates is the mayor of Microsoft village.

Gates continued the movie with his representation of the recent Congressional questioning he’s endured. Dressed as the guys from “Night at the Roxbury,” Gates along with Steve Ballmer, VP of Sales and Support, did the whole head-bobbing bit. Sitting before the panel of judges and other technology execs, they were accused of unfair practices in the deployment of Windows98 and IE. They responded with the pointing bit the Roxbury boys use in response to a woman’s advance.

Also in the film was a soundbyte from the news of 2000 where Amazon.com had a small gain of only 78 points on the market for a day’s trading.

Highlight to a movie was a spoofed Gap ad. A group of programmers are dancing poorly as they are being taped for the commercial when the director stops taping. Director George Lucas addresses the programmers as one asks for the motivation. Lucas responds “Imagine you have been up 72 hours on a deadline. You have consumed 39 cold pizzas and several gallons of coffee. You have just banged out 3 million lines of seamless code and the product will make it to the market on time.” The coder/dancers perform perfectly.

Finally, Gates closed the film with him and Ballmer performing as Michael Flatley of Riverdance. Gates exclaims to Ballmer “this isn’t so hard.”

Gates moved on to addressing the work of his Operating Systems group. Currently available products include embedded Windows for devices, Windows98 for the home user, WindowsNT for the server and workstation, and WindowsCE for personal companion (palmtop) devices. Now, he is proud to introduce Windows2000. Based on WindowsNT, the system extends past abilities and opens up new possibilities with added features.

Windows2000 Professional for the desktop features IntelliMirror for easy deployment of systems, mobility options, and automated system maintenance. IntelliMirror is based on the ability for an administrator to determine a system should be automatically configured to a user or a group in a certain way. Upon each login or program execution, IntelliMirror checks the configuration and sets up the system appropriately.

Windows2000 Server features Distributed Services, which manages resources. This allows for redundant systems and recovering from errors within a node’s failure.

Windows2000, as a platform, features easy navigation and knowledge management. It is designed to integrate transactional web development tools for e-commerce. Gates even spoke of interoperability for business processing.

Gates invited out Chris Capossela, Keith White, and Doug Groncki to enact a possible situation using Windows2000 for controlling information. In this case, they were working within a claims adjustment office for an insurance company.

Doug, acting as the network administrator assigns rights for his two users. Using the Active Directory Services (ADS), which organizes a network architecture and manages resources, he opened the policy software. (ADS resembles some of the features of Netware Administrator, but has a Windows Explorer - type interface and extends functionality in some areas.) The policy software allowed him to determine the exact applications and resources that should be available to a workgroup or, specifically, to Chris.

Chris, acting as a base employee, tried to open an application which he did not have access to on his 2000 workstation system and promptly received an error. Then, he tried a program which was not installed on the system, but had the source files available on the network. The server installed the application while showing a splash screen. However, it perfomed the entire install on Doug’s specifications so that Chris did not have to set any properties or hit any buttons. In addition, Chris promptly closed the program and deleted some needed DLLs and the executable. When he went back the Start, it reinstalled the program without delivering an error.

Chris then decided to hold a NetMeeting with Keith, a claims inspector. Meanwhile, Doug generated some mass traffic on the T1 line. The video and sound quality quickly degraded and froze. What looked like another major glitch like last year’s was actually introducing a new feature called Quality of Service. Under Quality of Service of the ADS, Doug allocated the bandwidth that Chris would need to assure good video-conferencing. The bandwidth was allocated to the workgroup instead of the person, and interestingly, Doug did it on a portable device (sized between palmtop and laptop) using wireless networking. Suddenly, the video quality returned.

Keith informed us that as a claims adjuster, he needs to be able to take critical data on the road. In lieu of the old Briefcase feature, Win2000 uses a “Make Available Offline” command that transfers directories or files to a local drive. Keith noted that SQL 7.0 even supports this feature for whole databases. Also, there are synchronization features for file transfer. Keith undocked his laptop and took it to the “accident site”. He was able to take a picture using a digital camera and immediately upload the picture into the laptop using an infrared port. Win2000 made a directory called My Pictures and saved the file there.

Gates urged that people interested in Windows2000 should visit the site at www.microsoft.com/windows/.

I noticed that links to the Comdex/Windows World events are available on the Microsoft home page.

Gates closed the presentation by reiterating the progress of communications as CRT screens are phased out in favor of LCD, USB and 1394 ports come into their own, wireless networking becomes the standard, A/V becomes more so online in place of text and graphics, and readability on the screen becomes a reality.

Bill Gates recently released his second book, entitled “Business @ the Speed of Thought.”