Gates Shows Off Future At ComdexGates Shows Off Future At Comdex

The only thing missing was the kitchen sink. In his keynote address kicking off the Comdex fall trade show in Las Vegas on Sunday evening, Bill Gates demonstrated everything from refrigerator magnets that display live news feeds to wireless monitors for Web surfing from the dining room table to an alarm clock that displays the weather and traffic in the morning.

Not exactly the stuff you need for a business-technology environment? Well, there was some of that, too. Gates and his colleagues on stage touted new Tablet PCs running Microsoft's operating system, disclosed an April release date for Windows .Net Server 2003, and demonstrated a new Web service to be offered by Kinko's that will let users hit the print button on a PC and print out documents a thousand miles away.

Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect called 2002 a tumultuous year for the IT industry, noting a drop in IT spending, a challenging economy, IT complexity, ongoing security issues, and the slow acceptance of broadband services. But he sounded upbeat before the big crowd in attendance at the MGM Grand's Grand Arena. "Some things were a big surprise," he said. Among the positive developments: Users continue to benefit from increases in performance at lower prices, a widening range of innovative new hardware such as chips and digital cameras, and powerful new servers based on Intel's Itanium processors.

The kitchen magnets and alarm clock were used to demonstrate new software called Smart Personal Object Technology (Spot) that's designed to bring intelligence and real-time data capabilities to everyday devices. Gates said the software will be available next year.

For Tablet PCs, Microsoft introduced an application called OneNote, to be part of its Office productivity suite, that makes it possible for knowledge workers to combine text, digital handwriting, audio clips, and XML-formatted graphics into a single document that can be easily E-mailed to others directly from the application.

Gates dished some of his biggest praise on advances in Web services. Gary Kusin, president and CEO of Kinko's Inc., joined Gates on stage to announce a new service, called File Print Kinko's, that will let PC users print to a far-away Kinko's store simply by clicking on the print command of a document and choosing the Kinko's option. Kinko's then will deliver the documents to the designated location. "This is a fantastic example of what Web services can do," Gates said. The service, scheduled for mid-2003 availability, will incorporate Microsoft's MapPoint technology for choosing a delivery location and .Net Alerts for communicating back to the user that the order was received.