Peek into Windows' future
WinHEC guests get overviews of new software

By DAN RICHMAN
P-I REPORTER
source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine..._winhec24.html

It made perfect sense.

Microsoft Corp. used the opening day of WinHEC 2006, a highly technical conference, on Tuesday to announce the next-to-final version of updates to its key products: the Windows operating system and Office business suite.

The 3,600 developers and engineers gathered in Seattle for the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, representing hardware and software makers from 50 countries, were a logical group to present with the long-awaited software.

That's because Microsoft depends heavily on them to expand its Windows franchise.

"This year we have a healthier, stronger PC market than ever, and lots of new opportunities in front of us," said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect, addressing a near-capacity crowd at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

Gates said computer features that are now commonplace, such as the USB connectivity port and the instant-connectivity technology called Plug and Play, emerged from past WinHECs.

To whet the appetites of attendees, who will spend three days learning how to hook into and build upon the software, Windows senior vice president Will Poole gave overviews of Windows Vista, for PCs, and the software code-named Windows Server Longhorn, for servers.

Those products will be released online in their so-called Beta 2 form in the next few days. A Beta 2 version of the Office 2007 business-software suite, the company's other cash cow, became available Tuesday.

Beta 2 is the step preceding general release, which after several delays is now scheduled by November for Longhorn and by January for Windows Vista and Office 2007.



The company has taken heat from computer makers for denting their sales by missing ship dates. And analyst Rick Sherlund at Goldman, Sachs & Co. is factoring in a two-month delay even from early January.

Addressing what has become a key concern for users, Gates said that "each product has been through a methodology for design and testing that brings security up to a whole new level."

As he has at most of the past 14 WinHECs, Gates also used the conference to survey Microsoft's wide range of undertakings -- again with the hope of enlisting other companies to expand what he called the PC ecosystem.

That high-level approach suited several attendees.

Sanjay Kolhe, a senior software engineer with Siemens in Dallas, works on DSL routers, which he said must be adapted to function optimally with Vista.

"You have to have a deeper understanding of where this whole thing is going in order to see what you can provide in your device that connects to a Windows machine," Kolhe said.

But more of those attending expressed interest in understanding the highly technical details of Microsoft's software.

Mark Veltman, a senior R&D engineer with the PC division of Sony Deutschland, Stuttgart, said he's working to improve the image quality those machines offer.

There's "more work than expected" required to get the company's own image-improvement software to harness Vista's capabilities, and he said he came to huddle with Microsoft engineers for help solving the problems.

WinHEC offers 128 hours of technical sessions in hopes of answering such questions.

In his overview, the world's richest man acknowledged that the company's attempts to turn the PC into a living room-based entertainment center -- based on the Media Center edition of Windows XP -- have been slow to gain traction.

But that's about to change, he said.

"It's this year that we're getting all the elements to come together," he said. "So people can really expect the PC to be the place where everything comes together."

Gates also said the move from 32-bit to faster 64-bit computing, in the works for many years, is finally occurring.

"We're now making the shift, and this is a very important shift -- a number of our server products are going to be 64-bit only," he said.

With 64-bit computing, "we'll no longer be talking about catching up with proprietary Unix and mainframe performance, because we've gone far beyond that," he said.

The next big technology, Gates said, is multicore processors, already coming onto the market from Intel and AMD. By 2009, all PCs will use them, he said.

Though dual-core chips work fine with Vista, chips of the future, using 16 or more processor cores, will require "some very, very innovative work" to work best, he said.

On the server level, Microsoft is continuing to pursue virtualization, a technology it took up in 2004.

Virtualization creates multiple servers on a single machine, maximizing processor use and saving money on power, air conditioning, space and hardware.

A demo for the first time showed virtual machines running under Red Hat Linux -- an operating system that Chief Executive Steve Ballmer once called a cancer but that is gaining popularity both on the desktop and on servers.

Poole debuted the two styles of "Vista-compliant" stickers that computer makers can affix to their wares in advance of Vista's ship date.

One, small and gray, promises only that the PC "Works with Windows Vista." The other, larger and colorful, proclaims the machine "Certified for Windows Vista," meaning it can take advantage of the operating system's fancier features.

"It creates market opportunities for upselling," Poole noted.

ON THE WEB

For more information about the conference, visit www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx

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