Steve Ballmer's CES 2009 Keynote Address

But this time it was the economy looking down on Balmer in what had to be one of the most low key presentations we've ever seen from the CEO of Microsoft.

If you're looking for full coverage of the presentation check out Engadget or Gizmodo. If you didn't see the keynote, Microsoft has put together a landing page full of CES videos.

Although I watched the entire keynote, I'm only going to cover what stood out to me. Here we go!

Gary Shapiro, CEO of CEA, struts onto stage looking like a younger and much tanner Ron Popeil. Unfortunately he doesn't show us anything as exciting as the Pocket Fisherman or the Smokeless Ashtray. He's doing his best to remain positive, but the look on his face says, "Should I be up here hustling electronics while thousands of people are losing their jobs and homes?" 

He brings Steve Balmer on stage who is sporting a thinner waistline and a burgundy sweater that looks like something I would have worn to a high school dance in the mid 80's.

If the attendees were expecting the sweaty "Developers, developers, developers!" or the primal scream and dance version of Balmer they came to the wrong place. He pays tribute to Bill Gates and claps so loud I have to turn down my speakers.

For much of his presentation he stands off to the side of a large screen that flashes products related to his talking points. This is a HUGE improvement over the PowerPoint slides Gates used at past CES keynotes. Balmer notes that in a world of nearly 6 billion people only 1 billion own a PC. One of my followers on Twitter asked, "Of those 6 billion, how many have reliable electricity?"

Good question.

At one point Balmer mistakenly thinks he's at the Worldwide Partner Conference and announces partnerships with Dell (who will sell systems pre-bundled with Windows Live Essentials) and Verizon who will integrate Live Search into many of their phones. It just didn't matter to this group of CONSUMERS. Anyway, Microsoft is clearly pitting Windows Live Essentials against Google's offerings of Gmail, Picasa, GTalk, Google Toolbar, and Google Docs. My favorite Essentials products are Windows Live Writer and Photo Gallery but neither were shown or mentioned.

Eventually Charlotte Jones comes out for what I thought was a Windows 7 demo. Well, it starts out as a Windows 7 demo but morphs into a Windows Mobile, Xbox, and Hotmail demo. I guess the point here is to show convergence between many devices belonging to the Microsoft ecosystem, but I was confused from the beginning. The biggest problem I had with her demo, aside from her jokes that landed with a thud, was the small text and screenshots she used.  I couldn't tell what she was doing most of the time because everything was so small. Maybe those in person had better luck. Only when she mentioned Twitter did I sit up and take much interest.

Balmer mentions Facebook in a manner which told everyone he's never seen it. If you're going to talk about Facebook to a crowd full of people who use it, then you need to find someone who uses the product.

It's now about 15 minutes into the presention and we haven't heard the "V" word. I wonder if Balmer is going to avoid saying Vista in the same fashion that McCain avoided talking about President Bush during the campaign? But speaking of Windows 7, Microsoft should rename it Windows Vista SP2 and give it away free to those who purchased Vista. From what I can tell, it's a very minor upgrade with some eye candy tossed in. Isn't Windows 7 what Vista should have been the first time around? From what I heard tonight, (easier to use, fewer nag screens) it sounds like I'm being asked to buy a product that will make my PC less annoying compared to Vista. I can't imagine this will go over any better than asking customers to purchase anti-virus or malware software from the same company that developers the operating system.

Time for the musical number, and I wonder if the person who booked the group, Tripod, will still have a job come tomorrow morning? I don't know how to describe this  band except to say that I'd rather watch 17 straight hours of The Wiggles than listen to another song from Tripod.

Robbie Bach has the good fortune of following Tripod and someone forgot to give him the memo that presenters are wearing sweaters this year instead of zipper sweat shirts. But that's neither here nor there because he gives the best demos of the evening. He talks about Media Center (cool) and Sync (snooze) and has this to say, "The Zune had a great year".

Nobody knows what that means because he doesn't elaborate. As another of my Twitter followers noted, "The Zune had a good year except for ONE DAY".

You'd assume that we'd hear a little more about the Zune given the audience. I was hoping for the Zune phone or anything to give Apple and their iPhone some competition. Many of the devices shown on stage looked quite good unless you happened to watch what Apple unveiled last week at MacWorld.

And that brings me to one big difference between Microsoft and Apple. Much of what we saw tonight as far as Windows 7 features and the Netflix integration on Xbox 360 is old news. This stuff has been on blogs and Digg for weeks. If you're an Xbox fan you're probably streaming Netflix movies. And if you read gadget blogs, you've already seen the coolest Windows 7 features. Very little demo content felt new, and I believe that explains the lackluster response from the audience throughout the keynote.

By contract, Apple has the uncanny ability to keep products and features under wraps until Jobs demos them on stage. His, "Oh, and one more thing…" has become legendary. Jobs keeps the Apple fans (and everyone else) guessing which builds tension and excitement.

Both of which were lacking tonight. 

So back to Robbie Bach. Few people are going to get excited over Sync until it's available on more than Ford vehicles. Would we care about Windows Mobile if it were available on only a couple of phones made by Motorola? Same goes for Sync.

He shows a cool Halo demo and the crowd responds well. We learn that the average Halo player racks up 150 hours a year playing the game on Xbox Live. The number seems low based on my coworkers who probably rack up that many in a month. When Bach shows a screen full of Xbox avatars I can't help by think how much the Nintendo Wii has influenced other consoles.

Bach knows how to deliver a presentation and he uses BIG FONTS so we can all see what he's talking about. When he announces that over 17 million are using Xbox Live, a huge 17 MILLION shows up on the screen behind him.

When Bach steps down, Balmer tells us about Moore's Law before bringing a women from Microsoft Research on stage to show us a curious medical application on what looks to be a Table PC. Of course, it wouldn't be a Microsoft presentation without the obligatory Surface demo we've all seen a dozen times before. Doesn't it feel like Surface has been in the making for 7 years?

Given that this show took place in Las Vegas, I was hoping Balmer would walk over to the Surface unit and scream, "CASINOS ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS THING!!!!!"

That's my take on tonight's 2009 CES keynote. I was hoping for a little more excitement and a few more new product announcements, but I understand the reasons for having a more subdued evening.

By Brett Nordquist - blog.nordquist.org