stuart test blog

Bill Gates presented the keynote at CES a short while ago and I’m just watching the streaming video now. Lots of Windows Vista features displayed, nothing which really excites me at all. Zune mp3 player gets a bit of a push too – number 2 mp3 player in it’s segment?? Windows Live……

Most exciting announcement so far has been the addition of a new server product targeted for homes called Windows Home Server. At first glance it doesn’t seem that interesting, and nothing that couldn’t be achieved with free, open-source software. However, dig a little deeper and you’ll find a bunch of really innovative features that you won’t find anywhere else yet. The most interesting of these is the storage management features: Windows Home Server doesn’t use drive letters, instead all storage is aggregated into one large storage group, and within that storage group data is replicated among the drives to provide redundancy so that drives can be added or removed without worrying about what data is stored on them. Windows Home Server will be available as a beta within the next couple of months with a release date aimed at the second half of the year. Paul Thurrott has a more in-depth review with some screenshots. Another compelling feature is the ability to access all of your files remotely using a Windows Live address that is configured for your Windows Home Server. This also allows you to upload photos to your server over the internet from wherever you are in the world.

The Xbox 360 also gets a lot of coverage, and rightly so – the Xbox 360 really is becoming the hub of entertainment in your living room that Microsoft have been aiming towards for the last few years. Along with the TV and movie downloads that are already available, Microsoft have now added IPTV access from the Xbox 360. This is not as compelling for those of us that live in IPTV-deprived countries but the potential that this opens is huge. I’m not too sure how Sony can compete with this – the integration into the rest of Microsoft’s products may win over consumers here.

Another interesting part of the keynote was the presentation between Ford and Microsoft about the new “Sync” device that will be fitted to certain Ford models starting with the current Focus model. Sync provides connectivity between your car and all of your portable devices such as mp3 players, phones, cameras, etc. You can listen to text messages from your phone read out to you by your car’s text-to-voice system. You can be talking on your phone while getting into your car and seamlessly switch to your car phone without hanging up. You can access your mp3 player through the car stereo and create playlists using the voice-recognition software.

Bill Gates finished the keynote presentation with a demo of  a room of the future which I don’t think we’ll be seeing anytime soon. Overall it was an interesting presentation – I wasn’t overly impressed with the Wow factor of Windows Vista or Windows Live, but the Home Server product and the Xbox 360 definitely impressed me.