Keynote comments by Gates

True to form, in Bill Gates’ latest keynote speech at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, he makes a couple references to the Tablet PC:

First, he comments about how WiFi changes the computing experience:

The advances in the wireless area I think are probably the most interesting because they change the character of computing. If you get the computer to be in your hands, like the tablet or the SPOT watch, just easy accessible, your willingness to do a wide range of things is very different. Reading, shopping, communicating, it is different, and so 802.11 has been a great thing pushing forward, getting that so it can do peer networking. The mesh type concept is something we’re working on in collaboration with a number of the universities here. I think the ultra wideband, although it’s slower distance, will play a super interesting role, being able to disaggregate, say, storage and the screen in a more extreme way than what we’ve done today.

One of my favorite things to show people is a webcam and audio chat session using Messenger on the Tablet PC. The webcam feed is usually interesting in itself. But they catch on to how different the wireless/Tablet PC form factor is when I hand them the Tablet PC. The mere experience of holding the Tablet in their own hands, with no wires attached to the wall, drives the uniqueness of the configuration home.

In terms of mesh resources and Tablet PCs, he didn’t mention anything about sharing mikes across Tablets that I discussed the other day. Ah, I guess I’m going to have to try the mike array trick myself. Nah, now that I’ve said that, someone will post a free, open source solution on SourceForge. Hehe.

Gates also suggests (in Longhorn I presume) that moving information between multiple computers is going to be easier:

So we see all the different form factors, the pocket form factor, the Tablet; these all have to work together. It’s still kind of ridiculous that, as you move from machine to machine, the amount of automatic roaming really isn’t there for even simple things like schedules and favorites and files, and that in the next generation of Windows that roaming will just be something that’s built in, a key core concept of the storage system.

Syncing information is a big hassle now, whether it’s with my Pocket PC, Tablet PC, desktop, or notebook. I’m going to be a bit skeptical on this one. Generally, Microsoft solves these kinds of problems incrementally and the partial solutions I’ve seen to date don’t work the way I do.

One seemingly minor gotcha is that I don’t always have my machines on at the same time in order to sync. I do, however, usually connect to the Internet. This suggests that the router (in a local setting) and/or some Internet service is the backbone of a synchronization feature that I’d use transparently. Or maybe we’re working towards the day when the machines are never really off, so that they can automatically exchange data when they can. Well, I guess if I have to turn machines on at the same time to get them to sync, I’d probably do that. It’s better than nothing. Well, maybe. I’ll have to wait and see.