The Ghost of CES Past

The typical CES is a showcase for what Microsoft and its partners will release in the future, which (I suppose) is a good tactic when a company has no real new products to show and at an event where consumer electronics companies generally announce their goodies for the following holiday.

Microsoft is an odd fit at CES, which opens with Chairman Bill Gates' keynote on Jan. 7. In past years, too much business emphasis sullied Microsoft's message. But with Comdex defunct, what other big show is there? A CES audience is better than none.

In recent years, Gates has talked about the future, what Microsoft products would come someday and how they might make people's lives better. Many of those technologies have yet to reach the market, one or more years later.

Some of last year's no-shows and has-beens, and what they should be this year:

• D'oh, Windows Vista. Microsoft's flagship operating system missed holiday 2006, although retail PCs sold well anyway. Microsoft's Vista message was all wrong at last year's CES anyway. Somebody must have missed that "consumer" in the show's name, because the Vista message was mostly about business.
• Media Center and high-definition. The big, blowout HD features, such as Cable Card, required Windows Vista. All those big promises about Media Center PCs with digital and HD cable capabilities came to naught, because Vista didn't ship.
  
  

  But all is not lost. Can you say Super Bowl Sunday? Microsoft plans to ship Windows Vista on Jan. 30, just days before the Super Bowl. If I were Microsoft, I would have Gates and a couple of partners on stage talking about Media Center, Cable Card, HD and the Super Bowl! Partners would be wise to have Cable Card-supporting Windows Vista Media Center PCs on store shelves and showcased with really big screens come the last Tuesday of the month.

• Portable Media Center. Poor PMC, we hardly knew you. At last year's CES, Microsoft touted second-generation PMC software and devices, which looked good in demos but largely disappeared by the second half of 2006. Between Ultra-Mobile PC and Zune, PMC got squeezed out of the limelight. May it rest in peace with Windows CE for Smart Displays.
• MTV URGE and WMP 11. Microsoft actually delivered a new version of Windows Media Player with the integrated MTV music store, as announced at CES 2006. Software and store work great; kudos all around. But Microsoft's Zune music player and Zune Marketplace software put the kibosh on Microsoft's real commitment to URGE and WMP 11. Observation: Zune Marketplace looks and feels like URGE, minus the great programming.
• Your connected life. Gates demonstrated how Microsoft products--Windows Vista, Windows Mobile devices, Xbox 360 and Windows Live--would make people's lives better, together. Some stuff clearly was meant for the far future, but not everything. Microsoft failed to deliver on many of the short-term "Live" promises and Zune whacked PlaysForSure, which played a crucial role in the entertainment lifestyle.

  With Windows Vista soon shipping, Microsoft should really crank up the volume on the better together message.

CES 2005 was yet another showcase of empty promises, but I won't go through the list of missteps. Many of them relate to 2006 vaporware or has-beens. Microsoft and partners did, in 2005, deliver on promises relating to Smart Watches and video content, neither of which has had much consumer traction. Still, it's hard to resist wondering about the fate of those "connected televisions" supporting PlaysForSure.

In the next post, I will tell a more upbeat tale, of what to expect at CES 2007 and why Microsoft has some real products to show off this year.