6. Everything Goes Digital

Some hardware needs more than Windows for integration. To get ordinary phones working with a PC, Microsoft is looking to Office Communications Server 2007 and the next version of the Office Communicator IM client which comes out in July or August. Chris Cullin of the Unified Communications Team was showing off new phones from Polycom, LG-Nortel, Plantronics and others with Communicator in firmware, so you see your contact list on the phone's touchscreen, with the same presence information you'd see on the PC.

Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of the Unified Communications Group, highlights a selection of new devices announced by Microsoft and nine industry-leading companies.

Not only will you get soft buttons for forwarding a call or setting up a conference call with colleagues but you'll be able to see whether they're free to talk first. You can also plug in a headset, a USB phone with a keypad or Samsung's monitor with built-in cameras and array microphones; with any of these you'll be able to make or answer calls by picking up the handset or clicking on Communicator - which already has your address book so there are no numbers to type on.

In the last session of the conference, Chris Matichuk, a program manager in Microsoft's eHome division, showed off a $10 TV tuner chip smaller than an SD card and predicted that by 2010 every multimedia PC will have a TV tuner built in and "you'll just expect it to work". If that sounds unlikely, he pointed out that 90% of consumer PCs sold in Japan in 2005 included a TV tuner.

Focus Enhancements tiny $10 TV tuner chip.

Conclusion

If you thought Vista was the limit of Microsoft's imagination for the PC or the early end of what Bill Gates once christened the digital decade, WinHEC should make you think again. In the very first keynote of the conference Gates picked out these last big targets; "what's left that's not on the Internet? Well, the phone network still has traditional PBX. That's in the process of moving. TV - still largely broadcast and therefore limited in the number of channels, and the timing. That's in the process of moving. We're finally getting all of our experiences with information into that digital realm." As always, the question is how much of the Microsoft vision the hardware companies will turn into a reality.

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