WinInsider

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced a set of wireless hardware advances in his Thursday morning keynote address at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), while noting the progress his company has made with productivity, server and enterprise issues, consumer technologies, and the Trustworthy Computing initiative. Gates also demonstrated the next-generation 64-bit Itanium CPU, code-named McKinley, voice-over-IP features in Windows XP, and discussed the company's new Microsoft Consumer Experience Center, an on-campus facility for showing off home technologies that will hit the market within a year.

Microsoft Corp. already provides support and training to software developers and shouldn't be penalized with harsh antitrust penalties, executives at two other software companies say. Scott Borduin, a vice president of Autodesk, publisher of AutoCAD architectural software, testified in Microsoft's defense Wednesday. Brent Frei, co-founder of Onyx, a company that provides customer management software, is testifying Thursday.

Borduin said Autodesk received early copies of software tools and technology training so the company could write software that works on Microsoft's Windows operating system and on its upcoming Internet project called Microsoft.NET. The states' penalties "will reduce the cycle of innovation and raise costs," Borduin wrote.

Advanced Micro Devices CEO Jerry Sanders countered charges that he testified on behalf of Microsoft in the antitrust trial to get the software giant to support an upcoming chip from his company. "There was no quid pro quo," Sanders said during AMD's financial analyst call Wednesday. "We've been working with Microsoft on our X86-64 bit extensions for years now."

On Tuesday, Sanders said that his words in court on Monday were taken out of context. Sanders testified that he appeared in Washington as a favor to Microsoft, but he said it was a favor in that it was difficult to fit into his schedule. Sanders had to prepare for AMD's quarterly earnings call and the annual shareholders meeting, which takes place next week, as well as squeeze in a business trip to Japan.

"I was happy to testify for Bill. The reason it was a favor was because of the time," he said. "The favor wasn't to testify."

Microsoft is lobbying the computing industry to start moving the Internet to the next-generation underpinnings that will lay the groundwork for much richer networking. At its WinHEC conference here, Microsoft executives urged hardware and software engineers to support IPv6, a replacement of the IPv4 version of Internet Protocol that underlies all communications across the Internet. IPv6's chief benefit is enabling a vastly larger number of computing devices to connect to the network by essentially boosting IPv4's limited number of addresses.

Among the reasons Microsoft would prefer to see IPv6 become widely used is that it enables the company's vision for peer-to-peer networking, the connection of computing devices without need for centralized servers. Shappell also unveiled Microsoft peer-to-peer plumbing called Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNR) that lets devices find each other on the network.

Microsoft will put its muscle behind the Bluetooth wireless networking technology later this year, selling keyboards and mice that use the technology to connect to PCs, Chairman Bill Gates plans to announce Thursday. Microsoft also will push Bluetooth software, releasing a development kit in May to help programmers support the technology and posting a download that will give Windows XP built-in Bluetooth abilities this fall.

Gates also plans to demonstrate use of a PC to make and receive phone calls, with the PC taking actions based on caller ID that ordinary phones can't manage. In addition, he will show music playback, with 22 hours of music stored on a single CD that can be played in a car stereo, PC, home stereo or portable CD player.

Microsoft shipped its Windows XP operating system just six months ago, but the software giant is already preparing for the next wave of computing. Microsoft has identified a handful of technology trends likely to reshape PCs and is working to define how Windows XP and its successors will take advantage of them, said Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows client team.

Topping the list of trends over the next five or more years is the growing popularity of digital media, the establishment of global networking, a shift to software services delivered over the Web, and the development of smaller, more efficient microprocessors that could lead to consumers owning multiple, powerful, yet low-cost PCs, Jones said.

Personal computers may be selling more slowly than they used to, but expect plenty of enthusiasm for the machines this week at the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle. About 2,500 software and hardware developers from around the world are coming to get the latest scoop on the features, functions and hardware to be driven by Microsoft's software in the coming years.

As part of that effort, the company is developing a remote control and a wireless touch screen so users can operate their PC more like a television and access e-mail and digital media collections from throughout the house. Both products are expected to be discussed in detail at WinHEC. "There are technologies that are coming together now that are making this possible,'' explained Mike Toutonghi, vice president for eHome.

Microsoft is continuing its push into the wireless computing realm, launching a test version of the .NET Compact Framework for mobile devices and a program to entice software developers to the platform at the company's Mobility Developer Conference. The strategy behind the compact framework is to deliver XML-based Web services to next-generation, "smart" mobile devices running on operating systems developed for Microsoft's Pocket PC and the upcoming Smartphone 2002.

The software titan seems poised to make a run at the Palm and Linux platforms currently dominating the handheld computing industry. "This is the first extension in .NET to installation on mobile devices, and lets applications developers use the same tools they use for desktop PCs for mobile applications," Ed Suwanjindar, product manager for Microsoft's mobile devices group, told Wireless NewsFactor.

Jim Allchin, Microsoft group vice president of the Platform Group, opened the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2002 Tuesday morning with a keynote address that touted the company's strategic Windows plans and technical vision for the future. Allchin presented a controversial theme in which Windows is the center of innovation in the PC industry, as well as the source of more than $200 billion in yearly hardware, software, and services revenues.

For the connected home of the near future, Allchin offered several upcoming Microsoft solutions, including Mira, Freestyle, and the Xbox. Further out is the next Windows version, code-named Longhorn, which will further simplify home networking and offer new interfaces for "Media Center" PCs that you'll use in your living room and bedroom, not in your home office.

Microsoft is nearing its goal to have all manner of home equipment join a network, with a hardware and software developer kit due by the end of the year to let companies link everything from light switches to refrigerators to computers. To accomplish this task, Microsoft advocates use of a standard called Simple Control Protocol (SCP), a communication method that lets different devices find each other and control each other. In combination with Israel-based Itran Communications, Microsoft will release an SCP developer kit by the end of the year, said Larry Buerk, a lead program manager of Microsoft's eHome division.

The developer kit will be a key milestone in Microsoft's plan to extend its domain from controlling not PC-oriented devices such as printers and digital cameras but also home security systems, garage doors and thermostats. Such a move could help make PCs as mandatory as telephones while amplifying Microsoft's influence with a new collection of companies.