Bill Gates at CES or All About VISTA

Last night I watched the over one hour keynote address by Bill Gates at CES, Las Vegas. Not susprisingly, the topic was the new operating system Vista. I marvelled at the fact that I was many states and many hours away from the event, but here I was watching Gates describe what is happening as part of the 'digital decade.' The text of the speech and various video feeds are available on the microsoft website here.

I was very interested in certain features of Vista and how all of our electronic devises were being merged. Since my wife and I have talked about putting in a home server, I was particularily interested in the introduction in the second half of 2007 of the HP Home Server which will identify and automatically back up all devices in my network and can be expanded by adding more hard drives at the hardware leve. The software (something like MS Home ServerSoftare) will identify the extra space and automatically incorporate it.

What's this to do with teaching economics? Everything. Vista will bring to all computing devices the special features now only available to the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. This means greater compatiability to the computer (what ever it is) used by our students and the Tablets that each of us economists are likely to want to use as our next laptop.

Go look at the video, if you have the time, the demonstrations are certainly worth it.

Click here to view Bill Gates' CES Keynote Update from the Microsoft Education News
January 9, 2007
Ready for a new day
The launch you've been waiting for is finally here: Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Be among the first to see these products in action at local launch events or online demo sites. <http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6029481>