Gates touts Internet lifestyle

Monday, Nov. 17, 1997 | 12:47 p.m.

Charged up by an entertaining kickoff speech by software guru Bill Gates, thousands of Comdex delegates mobbed three trade show floors today for the opening of Las Vegas' biggest convention.

Comdex Fall '97, expected to draw more than 215,000 people to the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Expo Center and the Las Vegas Hilton through Friday, logged on Sunday night with a first-ever preconvention keynote address that drew standing-room-only crowds to the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts and a hotel ballroom offering a remote broadcast of the speech.

Comdex, the Computer Distribution Exposition, is one of the world's largest gatherings of information technology professionals. Sponsored by Needham, Mass.-based Softbank Comdex Inc., the event is drawing more than 2,100 exhibiting companies that will show 10,000 new products for the first time.

More than 100 conference sessions led by industry leaders are scheduled for the show and more keynote speeches will be delivered this week by John Chambers, president and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc., and Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Novell Inc.

Eckhard Pfeiffer, president and chief executive officer of Compaq Computer Corp., was scheduled to speak on customer value and productivity issues this morning.

The kickoff address Sunday was more like a late-night talk show, hosted by the affable Gates, who offered four guests, a couple of humorous video presentations and a "Top 10 list." The biggest guest star, both in name and stature: basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was introduced as a new World Wide Web user learning the value of Internet communications.

Gates and his guests spent a little over an hour demonstrating how new personal computer applications are changing the way people do business and complete their daily tasks.

The chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. shared the stage with Maj. Jim Cummiskey, a Marine at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Paul Giovanni of Sedona, Ariz.-based Pink Jeep Tours, and Microsoft associate Chris Caposella.

Cummiskey demonstrated how wireless links between a durable notebook computer and palm-size units can give troops an informational edge in combat situations. The Marine showed how troop positions can be mapped and monitored and how some "ruggedization" could make the small computers useful in battlefield conditions.

Cummiskey stressed the importance of the wireless capability.

"You don't want to go on the attack with coaxial cable hanging out of your rear end," he said.

Giovanni, who rolled onto the stage in one of his company's pink jeeps used for touring the red rock terrain of Oak Creek Canyon in northern Arizona, explained how the productivity of his small company improved with the help of software that simplified scheduling and speeded taking reservations.

He said his staff now spends half the time to book twice as many tours and that errors have been reduced in the process. Now, Pink Jeep Tours is offering a virtual tour on a World Wide Web site and offers a means to make reservations on line in less than a minute.

Caposella offered a demonstration of the Window NT 5.0 software, a program that will allow computer users to move within a network and allow all personalized and customized settings to follow them. For example, if a user logs onto a PC with programs that have personalized settings, such as a spelling checker with special words the computer "learned" from the user, that user can move to a different machine and not lose the custom applications. Programs also can follow a user onto a brand-new machine with the software.

Caposella said beta testing for the new software would begin early next year.

The biggest scene-stealer of the night was Abdul-Jabbar, who stood more than a foot taller than Gates and whose bald head was a striking contrast to the mop-headed Microsoft CEO.

Gates portrayed the basketball great as an example of an individual adopting the Internet lifestyle. At one point, the obviously nervous former center for the Los Angeles Lakers needed help from Gates navigating his own web site -- www.kareem.com.

Abdul-Jabbar's web page chronicles his basketball career as well as some of his new ventures and passions -- acting roles, a collection of artifacts important in black history and the jazz of Herbie Hancock. Gates took advantage of the jazz connection to show how consumers will soon be able to order digital versions of their favorite music downloaded to a compact disc, ready to play.

Gates warmed up the crowd -- 7,000 in the theater alone (an overflow site was also packed) -- with his "Top 10 Reasons Why I Like My PC." He poked fun at himself with references to his high-tech home and his high-profile Justice Department battle involving Microsoft's Internet browser. He talked of spending time with his new daughter, who likes Barney the Dinosaur software.

Gates' vision of the future also includes PCs with more features and less cost. He predicts major advancements in the next few years for speech recognition software and interactive digital television.