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Bill Gates’ greatest hits and misses

June 24, 2008, 1:13pm PDT | Length: 00:05:09
ZDNet's editor in chief, Larry Dignan, rates Gates’ many conference keynotes and product launches, separating the successful from those that missed the mark.
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Talkback Most Recent of 18 Talkback(s)

  • What is it with tablets?
    I sketch, I rush to the whiteboard to draw boxes and arrows, yet I've never owned a Tablet PC and I have only the mildest curiosity toward trying them. Why is that? There's just something missing from the experience -- I don't want diagrams in my emails or something. My uninterest baffles me, and I bet baffles a lot of smart folks at MSFT.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Stephen Howard-Sarin
    25th Jun 2008
  • not intuitive!
    Tablets as a daily incarnation are more a hindrance than a help. The goal of a touch screen interface is to make computing INTUITIVE.

    INTUITIVE is when a small child who has never put his own hands on a computer before can instantly interact in a meaningful way with a computer. THAT is the goal of good interface.

    If, like with ALL tablets and touch screens today (with the possible exception of the iPhone/iPod Touch) you have to do ANY configuration or use any menus to make touch work, it doesn't achieve the goal of INTUITIVE, and will then not present an attractive alternative to the consumer.

    When I use even Dell's Latitude XT on Windows Vista, in order for the touch screen to work right with stylus or my hand, I have to have both the screen resolution right and I have to go through an alignment procedure. This is NOT INTUITIVE.

    Projects like Surface and Jeff Han's work seem to aim to achieve this goal by computing with tangible objects, directly interacting with the data you want to use, rather than a series of buttons, commands, and shortcuts. They also (like iPhone) eliminate the configuration step.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    zdnet@...
    26th Jun 2008
  • Tablets are clumsy
    I type faster than I write now, and I'm probably not the only one.
    What I type, people can read.

    When I sketch something, it's on a scrap of paper to be tossed
    out 10 seconds later, what's the point in going to the trouble of
    opening the appropriate app, swivelling into tablet mode, getting
    the stylus out and drawing? Too much hassle!

    I'll stick to my scraps of paper for now!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Leans_To_Center
    27th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates? greatest hits and misses
    First ill like to say to Sir Bill Gates that though i am not working at Microsoft (I wish that i could) but the whole world is going to miss you.

    See every body misses and hits some or the other thing in life but the strength is what i believe what you have learned from a miss. And Bill is a straight answer to the line above.

    "PC at every Desk and every Home" who the other around the world is/was who thought that way.

    didnt want to comment more on that Sir Bill Gates is a person in the world who make the path for you , walks for you on that path and finally place you at the destination


    Miss you
    Sir Bill Gates


    Regards
    Bhupendra Singh Negi (INDIA)
    bhupendra.negi@hotmail.com
    ZDNet Gravatar
    bhupendra@...
    25th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates?? greatest hits and misses
    XBox is/was a hit too? I guess from that point of view all consoles were a success. I mean Microsoft loses money on each Xbox made. They cost more to make and are getting sold for less.

    Aside from this slipup.. the rest was pretty good coverage.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    TedKraan
    25th Jun 2008
  • It's due to the fact that the XBox is popular with the masses...
    ...but things may be changing now that Sony has finally
    figured out it's hardware tour de force, the PS3.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    nix_hed
    26th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates' greatest hits and misses
    Microsoft without Bill Gates?

    Unimaginable!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Misha35
    26th Jun 2008
  • Busines - or cult ?
    If Microsoft is unimaginable without Bill gates, then goodbye to Microsoft. Why? Because then it is not a busines but a cult.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    pkrdk
    26th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates?? greatest hits and misses
    If people are smart enough to use a WII controller, then they should be fine with the idea of touch screen. The problem really is how to execute meaningful gestures for numbers to be manipulated so it does not slow down the work flow. Take bar codes for example, the idea seems to be good enough, however it took generations of improvements for it to work out some bugs before the items could flow through the check out point swiftly.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    joe_leung
    26th Jun 2008
  • Wii controller vs. touch screen
    The major difference is that it's easier to swing a Wii
    controller like a golf club than it is to touch a screen with
    your finger or a stylus to approximate swinging a golf club.
    So even the DS has it's control issues at times.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    nix_hed
    26th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates?? greatest hits and misses
    Um, I clicked on this link from my e-mail to "READ" full story... WHERE is the text to the story? Some video comes up, I have that disabled, I can only read TEXT, I can't watch videos..
    ZDNet Gravatar
    janitorman
    26th Jun 2008
  • Plain text version, please!
    Why is it all video etc. I like to READ things, not WATCH them. AND I have NO SPEAKERS installed on my system, I don't WANT to listen to sounds from my computer, thank you! Please post a text version of video/sound files. Thank you.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    janitorman
    26th Jun 2008
  • Times article has plain text
    There's a times on line article about this, I have no idea if this is the text of the video or not, not being able to watch or listen to the video. Also, how about plain text version for deaf users? Thank you.
    http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3145520.ece
    ZDNet Gravatar
    janitorman
    26th Jun 2008
  • RE: Bill Gates? greatest hits and misses
    Its ironic, that with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research to develop the advanced microprocessors and computer hardware that this technology is wasted in that Windows requires it to "just run". The next advancement in computer scienbce will be to design a REAL operating system that is multi-tasking and multiuser that does not sap all of the technology gains just to make it appear that it works some of the time. We neeed an OS that is not burdened with hundreds or thousands of patches and updates. WIndows reminds me of a tower of toothpicks glued together. One misplaced toothpick crashes everything. The ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED IS VIA "OPEN SOURCE", in business its called TRANSPARENCY NOT MONOPOLY.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    floordog
    26th Jun 2008
  • Do what with whom with how many toothpicks?
    If you're pretending that Linux Kernels, BSD, and other open-
    source operating systems (and operating systems based on
    open-source projects) are patch-free, you're sadly mistaken.
    While other operating systems generally clean up the spaghetti code with a major point release of the kernel (such
    as the 2.x release), the noodles will pile up between those
    major point releases with patches.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    nix_hed
    26th Jun 2008
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