And Microsoft Corp’s next planned operating system, codenamed Longhorn, will be a step on the path to realizing innovation. Longhorn will introduce a completely new presentation system utilizes the underlying hardware’s capabilities that makes up for Windows’ past failures, Gates said.

Gates made the observations during a keynote speech that opened Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Gates used the forum to list areas of weakness that plague today’s PC-based systems industry. He blamed economic factors for pushing out PC renewal cycles to unprecedented periods of time – three to four years in business and four to five years in education.

The industry must close the gap through hard work, he said: The refresh cycles for lots of different systems are longer today than they’ve ever been. We can bring that back in somewhat by having enough improvements that we justify the [purchase] expense.

Another area of weakness is the fact that many applications have failed to take advantage of new hardware features. Windows did not escape criticism, and Gates claimed changes to Longhorn’s presentation system and the standard user interface would resolve this situation.

The way the experience will work is that people with even today’s hardware will want to move up to the advanced graphics capabilities, Gates told WinHEC delegates.

Another area Gates believes to be important, an area he described as a frontier, is usability across different devices. As such, Microsoft is developing what Gates called XEEL and described as a common ruler and set of function buttons for use across its Tablet PC, Personal Digital Assistants, phones and home media centers.

We can get the user thinking, okay, I know how to move through electronic mail or schedules on each of these different things, Gates said.

Taking the theme of usability further, Gates said one area ripe for big change is the PC’s relationship with the phone.

Underlining the point, he was joined on stage by Microsoft program manager Chad Magendanz who demonstrated a prototype business desktop codenamed Athens from Hewlett Packard Co. Athens combines PBX capabilities with PC hardware and software features.

Magendanz demonstrated the ability to listen to music then take a phone call, which interrupted and silenced the music, followed by the ability to look-up the caller’s details via Outlook and caller ID.

Athens featured a high-density flat screen, a single cable from the CPU containing high-speed USB and video, a slim-form drive bay, USB speakers, microphone, camera and Bluetooth-based mouse, keyboard and headset.

Source: Computerwire