"The best is yet to come," Gates told a gathering of software and hardware developers Tuesday morning during his keynote speech at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC).
Gates said rapid advances in high-tech appliances, such as digital cameras and video and music players, combined with escalating deployments of Windows-based servers and Web-linked devices, will keep his company busy for quite some time. "There are huge opportunities out there to power the world in even new ways," he said.
Avoiding any mention of Microsoft's legal battles with the US Department of Justice, Gates, who is also chief software architect of the software giant, portrayed Microsoft as having a bright future. In fact, he said, the company has more business opportunities today than it ever had.
But while Gates did emphasise his company's products as central solutions, he also stressed that Microsoft is just one of many players that helped drive the success of personal computing. The point has been one of the key arguments Microsoft has made in countering government charges that the company wields monopoly power.
"The PC derives a lot of its incredible capability from a huge number of companies that work around the PC, whether its hardware, software, services, consulting," Gates said. "There's never been anything like the breadth of the PC industry. And so the choices out in the channel are really quite phenomenal."
Not surprisingly, Gates doesn't see the emergence of Internet appliances, handheld devices or alternative computing platforms as posing a serious threat to the company.
"A lot of the work that will be done in most devices will be an outgrowth of the PC architecture," he said. In fact, Gates said, companies now looking to offer new form factor high-tech appliances are actually the ones facing the more difficult challenge.
"It's the other worlds that were impacted in a revolutionary way," he said. "The world of the phone and the TV aren't used to this dynamic PC architecture."
Simpler and faster
But challenges remain for the PC, Gates said, and among the two key issues that stand out are the complexity of the machines and the time it takes for the machines to boot up.
One way of making the PC experience better and less problematic is by developing software that can be readily updated, he said. For its part, Microsoft included a new Windows Update program on its latest operating system that enables users to have their software regularly updated through the Internet, with the aim of making the product as reliable as possible.
"We took a huge step forward in addressing reliability and this constant updating capability with the release of Windows 2000," Gates said. "Our road map has that technology going into all our PC offerings."
Another issue that computer users need to develop in order to become a mainstay as a home appliance is the capability to boot up quickly, with the ultimate goal being an instant-on capability.
Instant gratification
"You're going to have it on either all the time or else have it come out of hibernation or boot almost immediately," Gates said. With its upcoming Windows Millennium OS, Microsoft was able to get the boot time down to 25 seconds, he said.
For comparison, Gates noted that the Sony PlayStation takes 33 seconds to start up, and the Apple iMac takes an average of 1 minute, 10 seconds to boot up.
Taking a swipe at Apple, Gates said Microsoft considered presenting an iMac booting up: "We could have demonstrated that, but we just don't have the time for it," he said, drawing laughter from the assembled developers.
As for the PC hardware itself, amid all the new form factors and appliance-like devices, Gates said you'll probably see one simple component become pervasive: a microphone.
"Voice chat will be an explosive application, and you're going to see that on the different online services," he said. "We're also going to start to build in the voice annotation on documents capabilities, voice mail capabilities in a very rich way."
Standard equipment
Digital video and its increasing use -- thanks to broadband connections -- will eventually spur device makers to offer cameras as a standard component, he said.
-The camera will likely also become part of the PC, but it won't be until a year or two later before it becomes pervasive on every PC," Gates said.
Besides discussing areas of opportunities, Gates demonstrated the company's server-based products and its newest operating system currently under development, code-named Whistler.
"This year is a huge year for us as far as new product introductions," Gates said. "Of course, we kicked it off with Windows 2000, and there's a whole family of products around Windows 2000 -- an updated SQL server, an update exchange, some new things like the Server Centre."
In summary, he said, "Our commitment is to provide the software to deliver on all the advanced scenarios."
