Gates Heralds Microsoft’s Place in ‘Digital Lifestyle’

While Mr. Ballmer is not one of my favorite people, I have always had some admiration for Gates. I was a little dismayed to hear that he was having so much trouble with Microsoft powered hardware at CES.

Hopefully next time, he will remember to triple check stuff BEFORE getting on the stage. ;o) No hard feelings, Bill.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates may have been heralding the “digital lifestyle” Wednesday during his International Consumer Electronics Show keynote here, but his on-stage demonstrations proved that technology remains error-prone.

The kickoff address from Gates was riddled with demo glitches ranging from a marred digital-photo slideshow to a memory error that crashed an Xbox game. On the bright side, the miscues gave Gates’ celebrity guest plenty of fodder for jokes.

Conan O’Brien of “The Late Show” joined Gates on stage, opening the keynote with a monologue and then sitting down with Gates to lead him through his presentation.

In one routine, Gates and O’Brien were demonstrating a Wi-Fi-enabled digital camera, the Nikon D2X, that downloads photos to a Windows PC as they are taken. But when Gates tried to show a photo slideshow on the large screen behind him, nothing would appear.

“Who’s in charge of Microsoft?” O’Brien quipped, before turning to Gates, “Oh.”

Throughout his keynote, Gates pointed to evidence for the emergence of a digital lifestyle, such as the wide availability of technologies aimed at consumers. At the same time, consumers are now willing to choose a digital tool for everything from taking photos to listening to music, he said.