CES is just about over.  It's been a long week. If you're interested in seeing what I've been posting, visit my official work blog here:

http://frogboy.joeuser.com.

Yesterday I had a rare opportunity to talk to Microsoft founder Bill Gates.  I was able to ask him a number of questions ranging from where Windows has gone and where they think it is going.

Amongst the things we learned from Mr. Gates is that he's still the master developer with detailed knowledge of hardware and software.  We also learned that contrary to reports from Gartner and others, Windows Vista is not the end of the line. Rather, Mr. Gates stated unequivically that there will be another "major" version of Windows within 2 to 4 years.

Read the whole thing to hear about Mr. Gates's view on 64-bit computing, hardware integration, and more.

Never let it be said that Bill Gates doesn't know his stuff.  Today at CES I had the opportunity to speak to him on a variety of issues.  His technical knowledge impressed the onlookers as he expertly detailed the transition from 32-bit computing to 64-bit computing and made the distinction between the bit-ness of the computing and the number of bits in addressing.

As some may recall, last year I talked about how users were quickly coming up against the 4 gigabyte limit in Windows XP (really 2 gigabytes as a practical matter).  This has to do with the 32-bit address space in today's 32-bit CPUs. Bill Gates said that is why 64-bit Windows is going to be so important going forward -- 64-bit addressing lets users access a lot more memory "and it'll be awhile before we hit that limit" said Mr. Gates.

Three points Mr. Gates brought up that I found of particular interest were:

1. He "guarantees"  that there will be a major new release of Windows in the next 2 to 4 years. This runs contrary to some of the analysts who have said that Windows Vista will be the last major release of Windows. 
    
2. Windows Vista has helped bring hardware and software together.  Microsoft has made a great effort to work with hardware vendors to make sure Windows Vista and new hardware devices work seamlessly together.  Historically, Microsoft had been at a disadvantage compared to Apple because Microsoft only controls half the platform.  But with Windows Vista, it has teamed up with hardware vendors to create a more seamless experience.
    
3. Microsoft made sure to get ahead of the memory limit curve this time. 32-bit Pentiums were 32-bit in addressing as well. It started the work during the XP time frame and even now, servers are moving to 64-bit platforms (WinCustomize.com runs 64-bit MS SQL Server on an AMD64 box).  The challenge of 64-bit computing right now is getting the driver support. And "Windows Vista is our way of pushing the hardware vendors to strengthen 64-bit support now rather than later."

One other interesting note, besides Mr. Gates being clearly familiar with the in-depth technical aspects of Windows Vista, his switch-over to foundation work in 2008 won't be the end of his involvement at Microsoft.  Mr. Gates explained that after 2008, he will be as involved in Microsoft post-2008 as he is involved with the Foundation today.

Ah Las Vegas. Land of gambling and honeymoons.  At least, the latter I assume is what explains the noise coming from the room next door (or there's a lot of torture going on).

I got my CES pass without a problem.  I am a rare breed. I'm a software developer, Microsoft MVP, Featured Community Leader and a journalist all at the same time.  Having gone to these shows now as a software developer and a member of the press now, I can honestly say -- better to be press.  Lots of free goodies.

The Verizon 3G wireless card that I bring with me has continued to save the day.  You'd think that hotels would have nailed wireless access but you'd be wrong. Even in Las Vegas I'm surprised at how difficult it is to find a reliable hotspot. And when you do, it's $10 for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, the Verizon card has been acting like a champ.

There's been a lot of cool stuff shown to us and I havne't even gotten to the show floor. 

A few highlights:

• Yahoo was showing off their next-generation instant messenger client.  If it ends up half as good as the demo, I'm switching to that.  Made explicitly for Windows Vista, it's slick, it's got great UI, it's powerful, and it looks clean.  In other words, quite unlike most IM clients.
• A big trend at the show is making Windows Vista much easier to deal with hardware.  Microsoft really does seem to have a nice combination with the Xbox360 and Media Center.
• I'm half tempted to get an Xbox 360 just to get to high-def content.
• You already read about Windows Ultimate so I won't go more into detail here.
• ATI showed off a really cool cable card HDTV tuner for Windows Media Center. Look up OCUR on Google to learn more on it.
• And Buffalo showed off a DUAL N wireless router.  Fast enough to stream HDTV content.

Hopefully today I'll get to actually go to the show. I'm in meetings until nearly 3pm PST.

More to come...

Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft has been kind enough to take us and a number of administrators of Featured Communities around to a series of labs helping get us a sneak peek at Windows Vista.

As an encore, Microsoft got us a bunch of VIP passes to Bill Gates' keynote address very close to the front row.  Alas, Las Vegas traffic conspired against the shuttle that we were all in and the seats were opened to others and we lost them.  But just when we thought we were going to be stuck in the nosebleed section, PowerUser.TV's Kristin Hatcher came up with another idea -- Hanging out at the Microsoft private suite which, quite unlike the auditorium, had food and drink. Great food and drink in fact.  Kristin was able to persaude Microsoft's community relations team (who have been awesome on this trip) into letting us watch the keynote from there. 

So many of us saw the keynote from the comfort of a quiet private suite eating shrimp, crab legs, and drinking margaritas.  

Tonight at CES Microsoft announced the DreamScene Ultimate Extra.

DreamScene is a new feature designed for Windows Vista Ultimate users that enables them to display high-definition video content as their desktop background.

Users of Windows Vista Ultimate will be able to download it from "Ultimate Extras".  Moreover, Microsoft has tapped WinCustomize.com as the premier repository for DreamScene content distribution and content by end users. The gallery and landing page will officially go live by the time Windows Vista Ultimate becomes generally available.

Stardock Design produced all of the non-photographic based DreamScene content.  In addition, Stardock has been developing enhancements and tools to extend the capabilities of Windows DreamScene.

More information can be found at the link below.

As Microsoft just announced, one of the first Ultimate Extras (extra features users of Windows Vista Ultimate can download) is a new animated wallpaper feature called "Windows DreamScene".

So what exactly is Windows DreamScene? And what are the extensions and enhancements coming out for it?

Windows DreamScene is an animated wallpaper technology developed by Microsoft that plays high-definition video content as your wallpaper. The key ability of it is that it can do so without using significant amounts of CPU (basically the decoding of the video is the only real CPU use involved).  The animation itself is run through the hardware accelerated DWM.

Software developer Stardock, makers of popular desktop enhancement utilities such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectDock, etc. worked with Microsoft on the creation of content and has developed a number of tools to extend the feature set of Windows DreamScene. 

On the content side, Stardock Design created a number of 3D animated content for Microsoft including the default animated Aurora. Microsoft is holding back on releasing all the content they have until Spring 2007.  Stardock also added support for animated wallpapers on its popular WinCustomize.com community site at Dream.WinCustomize.com.

With regards to the additonal tools and enhancements Stardock has released two of them.

The first enhancement is a new program called DeskScapes.  DeskScapes extends DreamScenes to support dynamic content (i.e. videos are pre-rendered).  With dynamic content, you could have your wallpaper change based on weather, time of day, or news.  Or you could just have some cool Direct3D "stuff" that runs (like one of those fish aquariums running as your wallpaper). 

The other key feature of DeskScapes is that it introduces the .DREAM format. This allows artists to protect their artwork.  The .DREAM format supports triggers (changing what is playing based on specific triggers) and it allows creators to insert their author info and a link to their website which we think is crucial to encourage artists to spend the time to create good animated wallpapers.

The other tool Stardock is working on is tentatively called Dream Maker. What it does is make it easy for authors to create .Dream files.  Its goal will be to help make it as easy as possible to create your own animated wallpapers.

To learn more about Windows Vista Ultimate, go to www.windowsultimate.com. To download content to personalize your Windows Vista experience, visit www.wincustomize.com.

Get More Dreams (animated wallpapers): Dream.WinCustomize.Com

Screenshots:

(1) Dyanmic content uses virtually no CPU, it's all on the video card. (2) DreamScene in action. (3) .Dream Files support author info.

ATI (now owned by AMD) talked to us for a bit today and we learned a lot of very insightful things that I don't think you'll hear about in press releases.

The first thing has to do with the power use in Windows Vista.  The gotcha of the Aero UI is power user. In our benchmarks on Dell and Lenova laptops, having Aero running cost us between 20 and 45 minutes in battery life. That's huge. We'll be talking about that more soon.  AMD says they are working on their drivers to address that as much as possible. They have a feature called "PowerPlay" that they are implementing to try to reduce power consumption.

The second thing that ATI confirmed to a direct question I asked on the subject is whether gamers can expect to eventually buy video cards that are external to the PC. I mean literally, a second box that you plug in to the wall that handles the graphics for your computer.  This is something that would be available specificlaly for the high end user who wants the absolute best performance.

...More WinCustomize CES coverage...

Where can you get your CES coverage?

If you're remotely into computers, you definitely want to pay attention to this year's CES. This is a huge event for computing and there's some exciting stuff.

Here are three places I recommend to get your stuff:

• BetaNews
• WinCustomize
• Neowin.Net

AMD/ATI are showing off their latest goodies for Windows Vista along with their plans for a "true" Quadcore.

Intel's Quadcore is basically two DualCores taped together into a single chip.  AMD is working on a quadcore where each core is truly independent and has a single large shared cache.

They also talked a lot about OCUR which will become publicly announced in its final form in a few hours.