The Steve Ballmer Show
If Steve Ballmer wasn't CEO of Microsoft, he'd probably be on television. Man, that guy can put on a show. And every year Steve schleps out to Vegas for the Consumer Electronic Show. Bill Gates used to do the honors, but is too busy saving the world (if you thought you detected sarcasm, you'd be wrong. His foundation does incredible work).
This year, as widely expected, Ballmer talked about tablets. But there was much more. He hinted at a fundamental revamp of Windows itself, far faster, smaller and more reliable. Just like the iPad OS!
On the tablet side, Ballmer mostly focused on what's in stores now for Windows 7 machines. These aren't exactly jumping off the shelves, but Microsoft is not one to give up easily.
Tablets are hot, but Microsoft has its eggs in other form-factor baskets. Ballmer touted a dual screen Acer and a Samsung box where the keyboard emerges from the body of the machine. Sounds slick.
Windows itself, in its next rev, should be more of an embedded OS, tightly tied to the underlying processor. And here's why the game is changing: Windows 8 will not just support Intel and AMD x86 chips, but system-on-a-chip designs those companies, as well as SoC designs from ARM.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/07/2011 at 1:18 PM