Video Highlights: Bill Gates' WinHEC Keynote

I'm in Seattle for Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference--better known as WinHEC, and a huge annual gathering of hardware-industry geeks who design PCs, peripherals, and other products that run on top of Windows, talk to it, or are otherwise part of its ecosystem.

So far there's no news of major and unexpected products breaking here. But WinHEC is a highly meaty, very technical show that's a great way to dig into what's up with Windows and get a preview of technologies that will be on their way over the next 18 months or so.

The show kicked off, invevitably, with a Bill Gates keynote, which included the announcement of today's release of beta 2 versions of Windows Vista Beta 2 (here's Denny Arar's report) and Office 2007 (here's a hands-on first look by Michael Lasky and Lincoln Spector). (The Office beta is public; if you're interested in judging its radically different user interface for yourself, you can; a preview edition of Vista is also in the works.)

Microsoft is also releasing a beta of the next version of Windows Server (still code-named "Longhorn," which has an almost retro sound to it now). The fact it's releasing betas of its triumverate of cash cows--Windows client, Windows server, and Office--all at once is probably the biggest news coming out of WinHEC. The road to all these products may be long and winding, and Microsoft may be heading down it in fits and starts. But new betas are tangible evidence it's making progress.

We also have blog items on this morning's speeches and demos (here's one by Denny; here's one by Eric Dahl).

And here are some cin?ma v?rit? highlights of the Gates keynote--about 20 minutes' worth, with my own sometimes shaky camera work choppy edits, and sporadic guest appearances by the nice man in front of my who was part of the official camera crew. Bill talks about where the PC hardware platform is going, discusses Vista and Office, introduces a Vista demo, speaks of Microsoft's new pay-as-you-go Windows PCs for developing markets, and more. Press the play button (click twice in IE) to get it going...