Well I am now sitting at Terminal 5 at JFK waiting for my flight home to Florida. Hard to believe I just flew in last night, attended the Windows 7 Launch Party in NYC and am now heading home. It was quick but it was also an awesome experience. Many thanks to Marcus Schmidt (@MarcusatMSFT) for extending the invite.
Tarun and I at the Windows 7 Launch Party in NYC
I want to say thanks to Tarun Chachra (@tchachra) for attending the event with me and sharing the use of his MyFi device for connectivity. I have been tweeting back and forth with Tarun for quite a while now and when the opportunity came to invite someone to come along to the launch party his timing was perfect with a tweet at that moment. We enjoyed lunch and a tech discussion before we parted ways.
During the event I got approached by Stephen Boots (@sboots) and he was very kind and complimentary about this website and my tweeting (@winobs). Stephen is a Microsoft Windows Live MVP and we have crossed paths in the beta and butterfly forums. Truly a pleasure to meet him finally.
If you followed along with my LiveBlogging the Windows 7 Launch posting you were able to see some updates throughout the keynote and demos. I have posted all the photos I took on my flickr account and it includes not only keynote shots but also of some of the very cool hardware they had on display.
There were not many news breaking announcements during the keynote but I did pick up on a few:
- Kindle for PC. This beta app will be out in November from Amazon.com and will allow you to access your Kindle subscriptions on the PC (independently of owning a Kindle as well). It will share bookmarks across different installs of your books as well utilizing their Whispernet technology. I was shown a demo of this on one of the touch screen all in one PC’s on display and it takes full advantage of all the multi touch features. You can sign up to be notified of the beta release at Amazon.com.
- At one point in the keynote after Brad Brooks had done his demos, Steve Ballmer was back on stage and made a comment about a new deal with Hulu. Not sure what that is but the last I heard was there had been some thoughts about putting Hulu on the Xbox360. I guess we will have to wait and see.
- During the Windows Media Center Demo, Brad Brooks mentioned that a new deal between CBS and Microsoft will bring High Definition viewing to any Media Center PC – no cable service or TV tuner required. High speed Internet will of course be necessary :-)
Windows 7 Launch Party Keynote Video
Kylie from the Windows 7 ads introduces Steve Ballmer. Best moment of the keynote is when she gets on at him for being late this morning to meet her. He gave her a pink netbook with I am sure Windows 7 already installed on it.
Manufacturing Windows 7 DVD’s and Packaging Process in Louisville, KY. Why Louisville? There is a major UPS hub right there.
Disclosure: As we left we were given a goody bag from Microsoft that included several items that were also in the Windows 7 Party packs that were sent for Windows 7 Parties across the country. We had a pack of cards, a puzzle, a t-shirt, poster, media guide and 32/64 bit copies of Windows 7 in the Steve Ballmer Signature Edition packaging. The bag itself was one of the re-useable shopping bags.
Even if I had not received these things I would still be writing all this stuff about Microsoft – that is just who I am. Need proof – look no further than this site :-)
