Microsoft Center gives a peek into the future
eWeek | at | by Mike
Microsoft Thursday will open, on its Redmond campus, the Center for Information Work (CIW), which houses prototypes of potential productivity technologies of the future. Microsoft, working with center partners Sony Electronics Inc., Intel Corp. and Acer Inc., is running numerous prototypes of software and systems that could hit the market within five years. Prototype technologies from Microsoft Research currently at the Center include BroadBench, a display with a screen 44-inches wide by 11-inches high.
This display would probably cost around $10,000 today, but the price would be a lot lower if hundreds of thousands of them were built, said Gary Starkweather, an architect for Microsoft Research and the developer of BroadBench. "There has been enormous enthusiasm for the product from people like operations managers who want to put a whole lot of servers or functional modules on the screen so they can have an operator watch what's going on with their network," he said.