Glitches, hope for a digital future mark Gates’ CES keynote speech

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 | 10:52 a.m.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates was counting on getting big laughs by having NBC late-night funnyman Conan O'Brien interview him talk-show style for the kickoff keynote for the International Consumer Electronics Show Wednesday.

What he didn't count on was some of those laughs coming at his own expense in a glitch-plagued presentation that illustrated the frustration many technology users experience when they log on.

Despite the technical difficulties and O'Brien's quips, Gates pressed on, telling hundreds of CES attendees at the jam-packed Las Vegas Hilton Theater and millions more on a Microsoft webcast that the ease of use promised to consumers of digital music, movies, photography and video games would only get better.

"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," said in response to an O'Brien query. "And, it's going even faster than we expected."

Nearly 130,000 people are expected to walk through 1.5 million square feet of exhibits at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Hilton and the Alexis Park in the four-day CES that opened this morning.

Gates' pre-opening keynote has become a CES tradition. The Microsoft executive, acknowledged as the richest man in the world, has kicked off the annual event six times and also has made numerous appearances at Comdex, another vast tech show that had been staged in Las Vegas every November since the '80s until last year when show organizers said it would take a one-year hiatus.

And every year, Gates has injected some self-deprecating humor and celebrity appearances into his presentations, while introducing products like the Xbox and the notebook computer.

But this year's presentation may be remembered more for the flubs than Microsoft's announcements of alliances with other companies to produce new digital music and video devices, next-generation television services and developments with the company's Media Center PC system.

The first sign of trouble for Gates came when he and O'Brien were demonstrating the soon-to-be-released Nikon D2X digital camera, which has an integrated 802.11 wireless networking component. The system enables a user to take photographs that are transmitted wirelessly to a computer for presentation.

But during the demonstration, the Windows Media Center PC receiving and presenting the images froze and wouldn't respond when Gates and O'Brien pressed buttons on a remote control.

The unit finally delivered after two false starts, prompting O'Brien to ad-lib, "Hey, who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?" Gates could only grin and bear it.

Later in the presentation, a product manager was demonstrating Forza Motor Sport, a video game for the Xbox system due in stores in April. While showing how the system could produce a custom-built animated racecar, a computer screen flashed "out of system memory" and the program crashed.

Although the crowd was filled with forgiving techies who laughed through Gates' misfortune, Microsoft likely will have the last laugh.

Gates said 90 million copies of Windows Media Player 10 have been downloaded since its launch in October and more than 50 devices and seven online services are using Microsoft's PlaysForSure service.

Media Center PC sales doubled year over year, with more than 1.4 million units being sold around the world, and growing by 40 percent in three months.

The company's Halo 2 game generated $125 million in revenue in its first weekend of availability, earning more revenue than the biggest Hollywood movie hits did over the same period.

And, a new partnership with TiVo Inc. will soon enable TiVo subscribers to transfer recorded television content from their units to Windows XP-based Media Centers, Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs or Smartphones.

Microsoft is one of the highlights of CES this year with a booth of 16,000 square feet -- 1,000 square feet more than it had last year. Samsung Electronics Co. has the largest booth of the 2,400 exhibitors this year, a 25,000-square-foot presentation.

An army of 2,700 GES Exposition Services employees in Las Vegas helped put the displays in place.