Today Microsoft took the wraps off its highly anticipated home server software, the brains inside several products that are expected to ship this year. I sat down with a company representative to get a first look at what Microsoft Windows Home Server can do. The demo system was HP's MediaSmart Server, which was announced here at CES and will be available in September.
At its core, Microsoft Windows Home Server allows home users with multiple PCs to manage system backups and share files. It also gives home users and invited guests remote access to the server.
Microsoft will update its Office productivity suite for Apple users later this year with a new version that for the first time takes advantage of the Intel processors in new Macs. The update, Microsoft's first in three years to the Macintosh version of Office, should help speed graphics processing in PowerPoint and other apps, Microsoft says.
The world's No. 1 software maker said Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco that it plans to ship Office 2008 For Mac during the second half of this year. The package of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, and E-mail software is designed for both the Intel Core chips that power all new Macs, and older Apple Computer machines that use IBM's Power PC processor.
Microsoft has signed an agreement with GlobeXplorer, an aerial and satellite imagery provider, that will provide new images to Live Search Maps. GlobeXplorer's images will be integrated into Virtual Earth within the next few months.
The update will affect Live Search Maps, which is powered by Microsoft's Virtual Earth online mapping platform, according to Microsoft. Among the changes, more than 400,000 square miles of U.S. aerial footage will be updated with high-resolution images.
Microsoft is at a crucial point in its expanding efforts in the consumer arena. Company Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates used his keynote address here at CES to unveil the Windows Home Server and announce that major service providers like AT&T would offer the Xbox 360 as a set-top box alternative. These announcements follow the launch of the Zune MP3 player and come right before the late January release of the retail version of Vista.
A few hours before his keynote speech, Gates took time to discuss the evolution of what the company calls connected entertainment. He also talked about the future of product distribution over the Web, how far Microsoft will go in hardware, and--as he enters his last 18 months at Microsoft full time--lessons he's learned as a technology visionary.
Microsoft and Ford unveiled an in-car system called Sync that lets customers access a variety of digital products, such as cell phones, handheld computers, portable music players and other USB-based storage devices.
The product, based on Microsoft Auto software, allows customers to use voice commands for accessing contacts and performing other functions. Ford's contributions to the mobile application include a dashboard for visualizing connected devices and buttons built into the steering wheel for so-called hands-free access.
Tonight at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft finally gave reason to spend $399 on Windows Vista Ultimate.
Ultimate's value has been hard to justify for the price. A few months ago, I did some comparisons to other products costing $399: PSP and Entertainment Pack (with $10 left over); or PSP Core and Nintendo DS Lite (with $21 left over); Xbox 360 Pro; 80GB iPod or Zune, with $50 left over for a case; 27 months of subscription music service with portable device transfers (at $15 a month); or 266 cups of Starbucks House Blend coffee (at $1.50 a cup).
Even the world's richest man craves better home entertainment gear.
Bill Gates says his house is already wired to the hilt, with touch screens and high-definition displays. But, in the second installment of a two-part interview with CNET News.com, the Microsoft chairman admits he's ready to revamp his system to add "some vision and speech-type things."
What catches his eye at this year's Consumer Electronics Show? Gates says he's impressed by the number of high-quality, low-cost digital displays and the continuing spread of wireless technology.
Microsoft Word is celebrating a milestone this yearit is coming of age as it enters its eighteenth year.
This ubiquitous word processing program began its life as "Bravo," the first WYSIWYG document preparation program that was brought to Microsoft in 1981 by Charles Simonyi, who is regarded by many as the father of Word, from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
Microsoft's official Word development team was given the green light in 1982, and the first version featuring WYSIWYG was released in 1983, but the application was not officially released as Word for Windows until 1989, which is the date Microsoft regards as its birthday.
Seamless, omnipresent and interconnected. That's how Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, speaking today here at the 2007 International CES trade show, sees the future of consumer electronics. And not surprisingly, he sees Microsoft and Windows Vista being at the heart of it all.
In what might be his final keynote at CES (considering his plans to leave his day-to-day role at Microsoft next year,) Gates spent a good portion of his speech detailing the slew of recent and upcoming Microsoft product launches -- most notably, Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, the Zune digital music player, and the Xbox 360.
One of the big hardware advances that Windows Vista takes advantage of is support for hybrid hard drives, a new generation of mobile hardware that includes both flash memory and hard disk in a single unit. The hybrid drives will reportedly speed boot-up, return from sleep and hibernation, and even general performance, though you'll need a Windows Vista-based mobile computer in order to take advantage. Well, good news if you've been waiting for one: This week, Samsung announced that it will soon ship its first hybrid hard drives, which feature up to 4 GB of flash memory. The company says Vista users who utilize these drivers will see a 20 percent performance boost in typical hard drive usage. And versions from Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, and Fujitsu are on the way as well.