Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Microsoft unveiled its vision of the future, where everything from phones and tablets to big-ass tables runs Windows.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered a somnolescent and nearly news-free keynote presentation on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show here, laying out his company’s strategy for home entertainment, mobile content, PCs and tablets.

“Whatever device you use, now or in the future, Windows will be there,” Ballmer said.

For home entertainment, that means games, video and music delivered via Xbox 360 and its hit wireless, touchless controller, Kinect. Microsoft has sold 8 million Kinect kits since it was first released two months ago.

In one of the keynote’s few bits of original news, Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 users would soon be able to use Kinect to control Netflix via gestures and voice. In addition, Hulu Plus will be coming to Xbox 360 this spring, also with Kinect support.

The Xbox avatar of Steve Ballmer delivers the news about Kinect’s improved facial expression feature, avatarKinect. Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

And Kinect now has enhanced face recognition, so it can identify smiles, eyebrow raises and other facial gestures, mapping those onto your Xbox avatar, which then moves and makes expressions in an odd, artificial mimicry of what your body is doing.

In one of the keynote’s more surreal moments, Ballmer’s avatar delivered the news about the new feature, called avatarKinect.

For smartphones, Microsoft is betting on Windows Phone 7. Ballmer reprised the company’s launch of the platform in late 2010, and announced that it would soon be adding cut-and-paste support to the mobile OS.

Ballmer also showed off a new version of Microsoft Surface, the company’s often-mocked multitouch-capable table. The new version uses infrared sensors instead of cameras, enabling it to be just 4 inches thick (thin enough to mount on a wall for kiosk use). Its “Pixel Sense” technology also detects visual information, not just touch, so it can “see” objects or writing material laid on top of it.

For everything else, however, Microsoft is counting on Windows 7 and its successors.

That means Windows will be the platform of choice for nearly all devices, from tiny slates to full-fledged PCs and even large kiosk devices like the Microsoft Surface.

To make good on that vision, Microsoft is developing versions of Windows that will run on the low-power ARM processors found in many smartphones and some tablets today.

Microsoft demonstrates a version of Windows running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

Microsoft demonstrated Windows running on prototype systems built around chips from ARM manufacturers Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia. (Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip is used in two new dual-core smartphones from Motorola and LG.) The demos included such bread-and-butter Windows features as Internet Explorer, PowerPoint and network printing, all of which seemed impressively fast despite the low-power chips at the systems’ hearts.

The company is also aiming to beef up support for other “system-on-a-chip” devices, by which it means any CPU that incorporates a wider range of functions that are typically found in computer processors. For instance, Intel’s new graphics-enhanced chips and AMD’s Fusion APUs (which combine a CPU and GPU capabilities in one chip) were also featured in the onstage demos.

“Support for system on a chip means Windows will be everywhere, on every kind of device, without compromise. All the power and flexibility of Windows on low-power, long-lasting devices,” Ballmer said.

“You’ll be able to use Windows anywhere you go, from the small screen to the big screen.”

Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

8 million Kinect sensors sold worldwide in first 60 days — that’s 3 million more than Microsoft had planned. Not bad. Microsoft also announced 30 million Xbox Live members and 50 million units sold worldwide with the Xbox 360 outselling all other consoles for the last 6 months in the US. Not bad at all.

8 million Kinect sensors sold in first 60 days originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Good news, Hulu Plus is finally coming to Xbox 360 this spring. Better news, both Hulu Plus and Netflix will be compatible with Kinect. We imagine it’ll be just like Zune Video’s interface, but there really wasn’t much of a demo during Ballmer’s keynote tonight. Excited? We are.

Netflix and Hulu Plus with Kinect coming this spring to Xbox 360 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Surface still isn’t for consumers, but it’s getting a whole lot wilder. We just saw the next generation of Surface, which has infrared “pixel sense” detection in each pixel, meaning instead of multiple single points of touch, the screen can image your entire hand in all its detail. This should allow for some pretty wild UI improvements, but Microsoft’s primary demo was the tried-and-true rippling water effect. The technology was developed in conjunction with Samsung, and measures four inches thick — it’s obviously not going into your next tablet. Under the hood is an AMD CPU / GPU combo. The wildest part, however, is pictured above: placing a piece of paper with writing on it on top of the screen / sensor lets you “scan” the contents of that piece of paper. Microsoft showed us a demo of a bank application that lets you swipe a mailer up against the screen and have it be detected and read by the screen. As for a release, there’s no word on when this is coming out, but Microsoft says it will be cheaper than the current generation of Surface when it does. We asked about the potential for this sort of technology in smaller form factors, and were told it only scales down to around 24-inches, and we really get the feeling that Microsoft doesn’t have any plans to bring Surface to Joe Consumer any time soon.

Microsoft shows off next generation of Surface, has per-pixel touch detection originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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