Seattle, April 25, 2005 – Today in its 14^th year WinHEC (the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) has begun. The theme for this year’s WinHEC is Envison, Partner & Deliver. My own interpretation of the theme differs a little from the one listed on the WinHEC site, either one or both might be true, that is something to find out in the future:

• Envision the possibilities that will arise once Longhorn is released
• Partner with other companies to create a stronger ecosystem
• Deliver x64 applications + drivers today

Many aspects of this theme were covered in Bill Gates’ keynote presentation. This year, Gates shared less of his future vision, but he was more talking about today, with Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64 being released. Talking about these brand new 64 bit operating systems, Gates emphasized the enormous increase in processing power using 64 bit processors and better security.

More processing power

Today’s servers and applications require more processing power, especially in the areas of video editing, 3D animation, Terminal Services and large database applications. Those will be the areas in which 64 bit computing will find its way first. Gates expects that it will take a little more time to find 64 bit computing in the mainstream.

New form factors

Especially in the area of mobile computing there are lots of innovations happening. On one hand, laptops should become more powerful, and in fact are partly replacing desktop machines. On the other hand, there is a demand for lighter, smaller form factors. This ultra-mobile PC can easily be carried everywhere, should be always connected and its battery should last at least for a whole day. Carrying around a high end heavy laptop right now at WinHEC, I immediately believe in a big future for such a device. Probably as another companion though. I can envision traveling with two machines, one full blown and powerful laptop that stays in the hotel, but can synchronize with an ultra-mobile device, can be used for heavy computing duties etc. The other one being an ultra-mobile device to take along to meetings, conferences etc. Dreaming away during Gates’ keynote I think about a great opportunity to develop a high end portable machine. It should be equipped with 2 processors, preferably a low power 32 bit processor located in the screen, and maybe have flash memory. It should have tablet functionality or a secondary keyboard hidden somewhere. This screen must have the possibility to be docked to a base, containing another 64 bit processor. It might be heavier, but undocked the device would be light, have a long lasting power supply and can be used as a true mobile device. Docked it should be able to run all kinds of demanding applications. There must be some hardware challenges to overcome, but I can’t wait for a “dream device” like that to hit the market.

Auxiliary displays

The Longhorn wave

According to Gates, Longhorn is the biggest investment for Microsoft so far. The product has a number of milestones to meet, but seems to be on track right now. The driver model is ready and available here at WinHEC. The fundamentals are done as well. This summer beta 1 will be available and the next big step forward will be made at PDC, when Longhorn API’s should be frozen. After that, a public beta 2 will be released and if everything stays on schedule, Longhorn should be released around the Holiday season in 2006. Besides cool esthetics, a very important part of Longhorn will be the possibility to easily find information everywhere. Thanks to metadata searching becomes an easy end user operation. Using virtual folders, users can dynamically group, combine and maintain data independent of the physical storage location. With hard drives becoming bigger and bigger that is definitely a key issue.  

A computer for everyone

The comedian Bill Gates was visible during the keynote presentation as well. He told the audience that between 1981 and 2002 1 billion PC’s have been sold. Around 2008 the 2^nd billion will be reached. With around 6 billion people living on this planet it is starting to look like something with the PC right now.

Unique change for Media Center PC’s

Will Moore, Senior Vice President Windows Client, talked about redefining the PC opportunity. According to Moore, the release of Longhorn, right now scheduled around the 2006 Holiday season, will drive PC sales. Even if a small extra percentage of PC’s will be replaced due to the arrival of Longhorn this will create enormous possibilities for hardware vendors. Moore made an interesting comparison, looking at prices of TV sets. Over the last 30 years, TV’s have become cheaper and cheaper, but since the turn of the century prices are increasing again. This mainly has to do with the arrival of HDTV. For a much better quality and additional functionality, customers are willing to spend more money. According to Moore, PC price development in the upcoming years might be similar. He took the Media Center PC as an example. Most Media Center PC’s are not located in the living room, but rather in the home office or den. Home users want to do much more with their Media Center. It might very well be a digital entertainment server for the house that should also run typical PC applications as fast as possible. In this scenario, a Media Center should be capable of simultaneously do the following things:

• Watch TV in the living room
• Record another TV program at the same time
• Play music in the kid’s room
• Edit a home movie in the den and rip a CD at the same time
• Edit some photo’s while the home movie is being rendered

To be able to run all these applications seamlessly, it is necessary to equip Media Center PC’s with dual core processors, thus high end machines. As such you can look at the Media Center PC as a “HDPC”, similar to HDTV.

Make sure to visit DotNETForDevices again tomorrow for more news from WinHEC.