Iphone

LOS ANGELES - The reason Microsoft puts on a PC hardware-specific hardware conference every year, even though it's technically not a PC hardware manufacturer, is to appeal to its single most important and influential class of customers: system builders. An unavoidable truth in the personal computer industry is that consumer PCs are designed to run Windows. The way they handle the PCI Express bus, the way they manage graphics drivers, the way they connect to peripherals are all directly connected to how Windows works.
This is where Microsoft capitalizes on its inherent advantage as a commercial producer of operating systems. Windows is the principal driver of the personal computer economy. If Linux had more than half the PC users in the world, this would still be the case: Windows is built to sell. For this reason mainly, manufacturers such as Intel and AMD, nVidia and ATI, and Asus and MSI take Windows more seriously than anything else.
In an earlier era, the choices Microsoft made dictated the course of computer manufacturing worldwide. This is not exactly the case today. Microsoft cooperates to a much higher degree than ever in its history, in order to move the state of the art forward. As Microsoft discovered -- some say, the hard way -- it had to start cooperating in this way.If the future of computing hinges on the whims of a software manufacturer, hardware designs cease to be innovative -- as we saw in the early 1990s -- and consumer interest drags to a screeching halt. It can drag to a screeching halt today anyway, thanks to a lackluster economy, a reduction in expendable income, and other factors completely out of Microsoft's control.
With Windows Vista no longer a promise in the works, now is the time for Microsoft to deliver. Manufacturers worldwide are coming to the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles, looking to see what Vista is capable of doing for them today and what Windows Server will be capable of doing for them by the end of this year. In prior conferences, Vista was hailed as either the deliverer of grand tidings or a pipe dream. But now Microsoft has run out of pipe, and it's time to wake up.
BetaNews will be covering WinHEC in depth all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. To launch our coverage, here are the five flashpoints we'll be looking at in-depth:
5. The introduction of flash memory as a PC component. Last week, with the announcement of its new Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro portable platforms, Intel put forth the notion that flash memory could serve a useful purpose as a kind of cache that faces the front-side bus. This is the Turbo Memory concept, and no, it's not an outgrowth of Intel's coalition with Micron - that's another project. Intel hasn't fabricated DRAM in decades, but it does make NAND flash...and AMD doesn't. If Turbo Memory becomes a desirable option, Intel may be able to leverage one of its admittedly waning talents to put forth the next advance in system design. But again, this will take some cooperation with Microsoft, which is why this is a big WinHEC topic. That's not the only entry point for flash on the motherboard, however, as Microsoft and Samsung are just now displaying the culmination of their joint project using NAND flash as backup memory and also as a hard drive cache.
4. Microsoft, the telephone company. This morning, Microsoft added to its Unified Communications push by inviting nine of its VoIP phone manufacturing partners to participate in a beta program for Office Communications Server and Office Communicator. What this means is, companies like NEC, Plantronics, and Samsung will start making real phones that connect via USB to PCs, and that users can actually beta test while they're testing OCS. This is somewhat new: you don't often get the chance to beta test hardware. But Microsoft sees this as a necessity, otherwise it'll have a much tougher time getting its foot in the door in its push to make land line phones obsolete. 3. Making input meaningful again. For decades, Microsoft has had an interest in getting a handle on the interactive tool that may inevitably render the mouse obsolete. Microsoft Research has actually made some serious headway over the years in natural language recognition. But time after time, the company's ability to realize the vision of its research staff has fallen far short of its lofty goals. This year at WinHEC, we're told we should see some actual breakthroughs in the field of next-generation input. What we're expecting is that the company made some headway in gesture recognition and speech analysis. Granted, these are the basic two stumbling blocks, and we've stumbled over them for so many years now that even the pulp science monthlies find them uninteresting any more. But if Microsoft has at last made a leap over these stumbling blocks, then we may get our first look at the next, next generation of Microsoft Office.
2. The changes in the system kernels for Vista and Longhorn. The chief reason Microsoft's kernel design for Windows was changed was to introduce a new security model at the lowest level. In fact, that low-level security change is so drastic as to have caused controversy among security vendors who now no longer can protect the system kernel the way they used to. But Windows Server "Longhorn" is where these kernel changes may matter the most, because although any network attack may take place on the client, it will target the server. We have been told to expect a new order of beast with regard to Longhorn, which has just now entered its general first public beta round, but even newer builds of which may be on display at WinHEC.
1. Virtualization, virtualization, virtualization. For every practical reason you can think of - security, practicality, cost savings, ease of administration, sheer coolness - the ability to virtualize Windows Server within a host whose own hardware knows how to keep it virtualized, is easily the greatest advance in Windows technology in a decade. Creating an intentional barrier of abstraction between the low level system hardware and the high level operating system will radically refine how servers are designed and built, far beyond just implanting them with smarter BIOSes. It also opens the door to the Trusted Computing Platform - perhaps the most effective means to secure the integrity of system hardware thus far developed, yet controversial because its trust can be leveraged to deploy DRM on a massive scale.For weeks, Microsoft was touting its best batters at the plate at WinHEC, ready to hit several pitches clear out of the park. But then the company may have hit a foul ball, choosing not to deliver on several key features of Windows Server Virtualization in time for Longhorn's RTM. Soon after that decision was made, several virtualization demos Microsoft had planned at WinHEC were cancelled - demos that would also have been showcases for recent advances by partners Intel and AMD, who now may have to go it alone.
So a huge question system builders and admins alike will be asking all this week is, what's up (or down) with virtualization? And if Microsoft can't deliver it, perhaps there's someone else who can. We will keep our eyes and ears wide open this week for instances of the word "VMware."
BetaNews will be filing reports throughout the day from the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, all week long. Stay with us for some hot topics, perhaps a few solid answers, and a whole lot better questions, as we find out how -- or whether -- the personal computer and the network server are ready to make some big changes.