Gates’ latest gadgets receive mixed review

Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003 | 10:56 a.m.

Don't expect Las Vegas technology expert Michael Beardslee to be first in line to buy one of Bill Gates' new high-tech watches.

But he'll gladly take one of the refrigerator magnets that wirelessly receives and displays updated take-out specials at his favorite restaurant.

Gates, chief software architect for Microsoft Corp. and frequent Las Vegas tech show keynoter, kicked off the International Consumer Electronics Show Wednesday with a presentation that was heavy on gadget show-and-tell.

CES, the first major Las Vegas trade show of 2003, is expected to attract 100,000 people in its four-day run at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton, the Alexis Park Hotel and the Riviera hotel-casino. Gates' pre-trade show speech was aimed at whetting the technological appetites of the thousands who will peruse more than 2,200 displays of audio and video, communications, home computing, games, computers and compact personal technology products.

Gates, who introduced "Smart Personal Objects Technology" at Comdex in Las Vegas six weeks ago, used that SPOT platform as a springboard for one of Microsoft's biggest product introductions Wednesday at the packed Las Vegas Hilton Theater. Gates said Microsoft would partner with Fossil of Richardson, Texas, Suuno of Finland and Citizen Watch Co. Ltd. to produce a line of "smart" watches by fall. He did not say how much they would cost -- but technology trade publications say they would cost between $100 and $250 in addition to a $10-a-month data subscription fee.

The watches would have customizable faces and would be capable of receiving data, such as weather reports, traffic updates, movie schedules and to-do lists as well as stock prices and sports scores. Gates said the watches were four times faster and carried eight times the information of the first personal computers produced by IBM.

Information is broadcast to the watch on the FM radio spectrum.

Although Gates said the type of information that would be available on watches is "glanceable," Beardslee -- a critic of the development of complex gadgetry when a simple solution will do -- isn't thrilled with the prospect of watches becoming a new societal distraction.

"I've got a navigator in my car and I admit I love the thing," said Beardslee, president of IT Strategies International Corp. in Las Vegas. "It's got an 8-inch monitor and if I were looking at it all the time, I'd be in trouble. But it tells me that I have to make a turn at the next intersection so it isn't a distraction."

Beardslee is skeptical that Microsoft's SPOT watches will catch on because consumers want bigger screens with rich content and not the glanceable information on watch faces that Gates has described.

"We've become a very visual society," Beardslee said. "People don't want their 15-inch monitors anymore. They want the 21-inch screens. Some people don't even care for PDAs (personal digital assistants) for that reason."

While Beardslee wasn't sold on the SPOT watches, he did like a future product Gates described when he took his audience several years into the future with a description of some of the products that are in various stages of development.

Microsoft plans to develop refrigerator magnets with tiny screens that will receive data on the FM radio band that can receive traffic updates, school lunch menus or ads from local restaurants that pitch dinner specials.

"Now that's one of the more interesting things using available technology that makes sense," Beardslee said.

He said he sees great potential in the commercial use of the technology, particularly in a big restaurant city like Las Vegas.

In Wednesday's presentation, Gates also unveiled a new portable media device called "Media2Go," which would hold 12 hours of music or a collection of stored photographs and video clippings that could be shown when connected to a television screen or displayed on a 4-inch screen on the unit. Microsoft is teaming with Intel Corp. on the device, which is expected to be available later this year.

New licenses using Microsoft's Windows XP platform have cleared the way for other new products that should soon be on shelves.

Gates showed an Exertris Interactive Exercise Bicycle that turns exercising into a video game. The program produces greater challenges as a participant gets better at the game.

He also showed a Bernina Artista 200E sewing machine that uses Internet technology to download thousands of stitching and embroidering motifs and turn sewing circles into international affairs.

Gates also demonstrated advances in the Xbox Live video gaming technology in a videotape showing him playing a round of the Midtown Madness car chase game with Los Angeles Laker center Shaquille O'Neal.

Gates also lightened up on some of his legal travails.

In more than a decade of keynote addresses at Comdex and CES, Gates has never brought Microsoft's court battles with rivals and the Justice Department over alleged unfair trade practices to the stage. While avoiding those discussions, he has frequently lampooned himself on his rivalry with Apple Computer and some of his company's infrequent failures.

Before the Hilton audience, he joked about the geeky portrayal of him in a recent television movie.

But Wednesday, when discussing his MSN.8 software and how it had received Good Housekeeping's Seal of Approval, Gates lamented missing some of the spam e-mail that has been zapped from his mailbox.

He said he wasn't too worried about not seeing spam ads telling him how he could get out of debt, but he thought it might have been helpful to his company if he could have connected with inexpensive attorneys that advertised online.