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AHEAD OF THE CURVE
Microsoft may have blurred the messaging, but its brilliant idea processor strikes the right Note
WATCHING BILL GATES' annual Comdex keynote is an eerie exercise. For starters, it takes place at the MGM Grand amphitheater, the site of heavyweight bouts and bites. But instead of seeing Joe Frasier climbing into the ring to wish the champ well, you see heads swivel as Carly Fiorina is escorted to her front-row seat.
The keynote's content is no surprise, having been telegraphed by the Times and the Journal in the morning editions. It's Tablet PC III: The This Time We Really Mean It Tour. But there is other news as well: Dell's entry in the Pocket PC sweepstakes with a $200 model, a slick small Palm-killer iPaq from HP, and a smart alarm clock from Microsoft Research. Don't ask; I don't get it. But Bill does, and that's what counts, or will.
Last year's keynote took the usual path of keeping Gates onstage through a series of product demos and alpha glimpses of new code. This strategy produced the dubious resource allocation of the world's richest hand model, with deadly scripted stage patter punctuated by moments of stark terror as product managers watched their careers blue-- screening.
This year's model is a hybrid of Disney's autoanimatronic It's A Small, Small World rotating stage and David Letterman's Viewer Mail segments, where Dave rubs his chin as we flash back to a vignette. Bill sets up the demo, then strides...