8:15am: the line waiting to get into the keynote is somewhat long, but certainly not Disneyland proportions.

8:29: People filtering in, loudspeakers playing various hip-hop and rock tunes. Center section of the stands already full. Music from The Matrix fills the hall.

8:57: Lights down, video starts. Discover, Explore. Touchy-feely yet Tech. Advancing the Platform.

Roger Gurlajani, Director PC / 3 Communications: Welcome to LA. 15th Year of WinHEC.
On the stage: N router, digital picture frame, a couple of notebooks, looks like 3 UMPCs. Digital living room with Xbox 360.

9:05: introducing Bill! Strong year for the PC: 'common sense tool' for every worker. In 1992, hardware wasn't really ready for GUI. 1995-Windows 95, 'real' start of GUI for Windows. Slide equates mobile phone with PC and portable (tablet). Windows is on more form factors than before. 'We're beyond USB conflicts'.

9:10: Digitization of the economy-moving TV onto the Internet. Moving all of our experience with Information to the digital realm. Standards-Inovation of applications and technology together.

9:10: Launch of Vista in January: most visible software release ever. 39k stores. Lots of press coverage. Video of Vista and Office 2007 launch. THE WOW STARTS NOW. Showing a video of the launch events around the world, highlighting the World cities like NYC, Paris, London. They launched at the Taj Mahal, Bollywood style.

First 100 days: 40mil copies sold. Adoption is twice as fast as XP. After 5 weeks, matched levels of 'other operating systems' [Hmm, dig at Apple and Linux?]. They're polling the devices you have hooked up to your system, relevant for this crowd (driver developers). Mobile devices are richer and richer.

Mobile Innovation around Vista-Video. UMPCs, Fujitsu, HTC shift, Samsung Q1 ultra. GW and motion tablets. SIDESHOW! Intel Mobile Metro concept (SideShow on a leather-bound pocketbook form factor?). A whole bunch of Santa Rosa notebooks running Vista. (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, etc.)

Showing off HTC Shift, emphasizes that it's from a phone company. Acer/BMW with Dolby sound. Sideshow/e-ink on lid of mockup of Intel Metro concept. Looks like printed cardstock, I guess it's non-working at this time.

4 times the numbers of drivers from XP. 95% of device drivers are updated. Devices include cameras, phones, routers (Wi-Fi security has been key). Certified for Windows Vista logo. IDC: $120bil of innovation due to Vista.

9:21: logo helps users buy peripherals that work with their [new] Vista PCs. Home networking, 40 million home worldwide with more than one PC. Windows Rally-home networking compliance with Vista hooks. We should hear more about Rally during this conference. Picture frames that connect to the network-phones, PCs, other devices. Security will be integrated and become mainstream. Rally will be as important as USB for connectivity.

9:24: Rally demo. Glenn Ward, Jim Barber. Senior program managers, MSFT. Setup a home network. Setting up a home router with Rally and Vista, 90 sec from plug-in. Easy device seutp using Windows Network explorer. Wireless Canon SD430 digital camera Wireless setup while NAS is setting up. Glenn and Jim plug 'Look for the Logo'.

Demo: copy picture from camera to shared picture folder over WiFi. Right-click 'Install' NAS. Seagate MSS Network-with sidebar gadget. Momento picture frame with SideShow driver (right click install)

Media Center interface-last 30 feet. PC and HDTV. Hi-def Media Bridges. Demoed a DLink 802.11n wireless bridge with an Xbox. Autoconfiguring. I'd like to see this in real life. 5Ghz 802.11n networking. Total of 3 extenders available on your network. 2.4GHz for data, 5GHz for media. 5 minutes total demo time. Setup happened mostly in Vista.

9:34: Bill's Back. Technology for CE devices will be catalyst for MCE extender for HDTVs and other CE devices. Pushing Media Extender tech in HDTVs, so you don't need an Xbox or another set top box for MCE.

Windows Media Server! Logos on screen. System builders will get a WHS SKU for building whitebox Home Servers. Obviously HP will still be the primary player in the US.

Steven Leonard, SPM MSFT for WHS: Backup and centralization. Families with multiple PCs connect digital experiences. HP Media Smart server-looks like SFF PC. Totally headless--instead you need to setup on home PCs. You need to run setup disc on all your PCs. Once you run the setup, you local data can be backed up and shared on the WHS. You can then run media on the Xbox 360 in the den.

You can administer media from interface-banned 'lil Ben (his son) for turning off the firewall on 'dad's PC'. Admin console shows you security messages like the popup in the task bar.

New restore wizard- restore states, apps and files. New drives can be added to WHS, and added to storage pool on the fly. Media Smart server has internal drive bays. I can see a hydra with a bunch of USB drives sticking out of it eventually.

Windows Live-you get a free Domain name with purchase of WHS-so you can get secure access across the 'Net. You can give read access to the grandparents. So it's basically a home web server device--watch out Comcast and Cablevision users, this could be a bandwidth hog.

9:43: Windows Server Longhorn. Now known as Window Server 2008.

Iam Hammeroff: demo of Server '08
Prevents unhealthy laptops from connecting to the corporate network. Admin simplification. Network Access Protection, hmm sounds to me like UAC for the enterprise. You can limit clients to limited network access if the client isn't in compliance to policy (ex AV, firewall settings, 802.11x settings).

Beta 3.

Since laptop is not in compliance, Intranet access (sales site) is denied. Once AV setup is run, access is restored. If user doesn't have correct rights to a file, he can't print or copy a file to a USB thumb drive. USB devices can be specified: so thumb drives are denied, but USB mice are OK. That way you don't have to glue ports shut.

Yay! Beta 3 Server 2008 released at the end of the day.

Bill's back: Where's the PC going?

64-bit: now 100% penetration (64-bit capable) on Server, most of the way there on desktops, 100% across the board by 2009? 64-bit give you more memory. However, it does mean new drivers. This is where the work needs to be done in the industry.

Design-school submissions. BulbPC, Pussy Cat. Etc. MADE in China won: tablet with chopstick input? Natural interface: MSFT bought TELLME. Voice recognition (get ready for a voicemail tree on your phone or home PC?). Mobile phone, tablet, pen based PCs. Digital ink.

VoIP with a sideshow interface. PC is going to be the Phone, the Phone is going to be the PC. Unified communications.

The "Live" era. Online Sync, online storage, online apps. Connectivity over the Internet. All the stuff happens over the network cloud. Windows client syncs data locally, but everything else sits on the 'Net. You can hook up any PC to the 'Net, log in to Live, and see your environment on that PC or Phone. (NC is now) Intelligence is still required at both ends [[fast PCs are still needed for multimedia playback, gaming, etc.]]

Joel's Day 2 live blog post of Mike Nash's keynote.