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razor1394
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Posts: 3571
Location: Sweden

Posted: Thu, 6th Jan 2005 19:27 Post subject: Windows crashes again during B Gates keynote at CES 2005

Anyone who remembers when Win98 at a keynote crashed some years ago? It has happened again at the CES 2005 keynote. The Xbox gets a BSOD, Media centre hangs, and apparently the game they are playing on the xbox is running at 2fps.

Quote:

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Despite suffering through an embarrassing computer crash that prompted jokes and guffaws, Bill Gates promised that Microsoft Corp. would help consumers stay plugged into technology, during a keynote speech Wednesday.

In his seventh annual keynote speech at the International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's chairman explained that the proliferation of high-speed Internet access and the falling price of data storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format.

"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," Gates told hundreds of technology enthusiasts, who gathered for his kickoff to the world's largest electronics show. "It's going even faster than we expected."

But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers - even the world's richest man - are to hardware and software bugs.

During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to Gates' pushing of the remote control.

Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a video game expected to hit retail stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" and warned, "out of system memory."

The errors - which came during what's usually an ode to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry and its increasing control of consumer electronics - prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?"

Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like NBC's Late Night set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.

LINK -> http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=7d5a65b1-8260-44c6-8354-ff4a1ef5d39b

The recorded keynet -> http://www.microsoft.com/athome/ces2005/default.mspx

edit:

The famous pic from the show:

Confirmed on Neowin:

Quote:

1. Delay before starting
2. Broken Remote
3. Internet not working (And using Firefox)
4. Xbox out of memory (BSOD)
5. Choppy gameplay for demo racing game, after O’Brien crashed to a wall

edit:

Quote:

"Wednesday night, Bill Gates hosted the 2005 CES Opening Keynote along with his surprise guest, Late Night’s Conan O’Brien. Overall I think things went well, but as can happen with live events with so many variables, there were a couple of technical issues noted by sites like Engadget. The key thing for me that I could have done a better job on-stage pointing out is that despite a small glitch with a remote control (IR) receiver, a single Media Center ran all the Media Center demos and we kept rolling despite the hiccup.

According to the postmortem, it appears a 2nd IR receiver run over to Bill's seat failed, so the Media Center never got the signal. It could have been all the IR interference in the venue- cameras and plasma displays and lights, or the powered USB booster - a piece of equipment that gets a USB signal over a long-stretch. The production team also handled a small power outage exceptionally well in the minutes leading up which might have contributed. These things happen and the team pulled it out despite some obstacles out of their control."

Nice for them to clear things up!

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