Watch Bill Gates’ CES 2008 keynote

Bill Gates CES
Photo credit: Flickr user Domain Barnyard

Mark your Google calendars. Bill Gates’ departing Consumer Electronics Show 2008 pre-show keynote is happening this Sunday. If you’re not in Las Vegas to see it live, Microsoft has generously set up a series of tubes so you can watch blobs of Bill and co. from the comfort of your very own home.

The show is scheduled to begin at 6:30pm Pacific US Standard Time but it never does, however be sure to get in early before the tubes are clogged like they always do. Start from the highest quality feed and work your way down. The webcast URLs are:

Alternatively, download the details for this event (iCal) to import into your calendars.

Expect to see new stuff from Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, Windows Auto, XBOX 360, Zune, Windows Media Center, Windows Home Server and Mediaroom (IPTV). Should be a great “going away” show.

Update: You an also stream the webcast via the Silverlight-powered Microsoft @ CES website. It uses the same streams so the quality will be identical, however you’ll miss out on the ability to full-screen the video. Interestingly, looking through the XAML sourcecode reveals a full-screen button and function already in code, but it’s been commented out for some reason. Guess they don’t want you looking at Bill Gates really big.

35 insightful thoughts

  1. I’ll pick up the decent quality downloadable version later… if there is one.. can’t be doing messing around poor quality streams that will most likely be choppy and messing around with timezones…

    “Expect to see new stuff from Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, Windows Auto, XBOX 360, Zune, Windows Media Center, Windows Home Server and Mediaroom (IPTV). Should be a great “going away” show.”

    hmm nothing to expect from IE8.. pretty much all I’d be interested in hearing more about right now…although Vista SP2 would be good too 😀

  2. I wonder if there are any more goodies announced for Windows Ultimate. Last we’ve heard from them was when the language packs were released.

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  4. They’ll probably turn the full screen version on when the keynote goes live. No reason not to, obviously they built in in for a reason.

  5. Good point there Kevin, Very good point. I never thought of that. Oh goody I’ll have to check it out. I’m on the beta!! LOL

  6. That’s 02:30 here in the UK. Normally I would stay up but I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Guess I’ll have to catch a recorded version at a later date.

  7. That’s why it went black all of a sudden. I had it in the background waiting for it!! I do hope they fix it!! I had to restart FireFox!!

  8. Haha! Sweet that was awesome. Microsoft always do great spoofs. Bill Gates in the gym and rapping… Haha… Oh, that was brilliant.

  9. One thing I noticed though (I noticed this for the Vista launch), the sound of them speaking is way quiter than anything else, so much so, that in some parts (especially where there was music playing as well) you can’t hear them at all. And then they cut to the audience mics, and I’m left ripping the headphones out of my ears and trying to stuff my ear innards back where they should be.

  10. Well I don’t see the CEOs of Apple hiring major actors and Politicians to create such a miniscule gag video.

  11. No, no he’s not… seeing as he is the richest man in the world, co-founded the largest company world. Now, if you can find me a dead rat that can do that, I’ll start a rat morgue.
    I think it’s kind of ironic that there is Al Gore in there, seeing as he is on the board of directors for Apple. But it’s all good anyway.

  12. He bought a program from someone, called it his, then copied off Steve Jobs. His success is anyone’s but his own! Why would Steve need to hire actors for a gag video….he’s not going anywhere! I am not arguing that Bill is not a wealth person, just a copy cat. Zune, Vista, Movie Maker…….all copied off of Apple products and I must say failed terribly……There are vista users switching back to xp for god’s sake.

  13. Hmmm. No Mac Boy, he did not buy BASIC, that would be DOS that he, Allen and Balmer bought. And copying off Steve Jobs? They both got their ‘idea’ for GUI from Xerox, so I wouldn’t say he was stealing from Steve Jobs. I don’t see you pointing out all the similarities from the added features of the the new OS X and Vista, so don’t bother about the ones from the old OS X and Vista. Failed terribly? Oh yes, that’s why Windows is used on 90-something percent of computers, and why Microsoft is still growing, and the sales of PC’s have increased…
    I’m a Vista user, I don’t want to switch back to XP.

  14. You guys can say what you want about Bill Gates, but given the opportunity anyone else would have acted the same, IF they had guts. Business is all about grabbing and creating opportunities.

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