Gates Wows Comdex Crowd With Tablet PC

LAS VEGAS -- Declaring the age of the browser over, Microsoft Chair Bill Gates offered on Sunday a preview of a computing future based on a wide range of smart devices, including a sharp new Tablet PC for managing handwritten notes.

Gates, closing out his first year in the role of Microsoft's chief software architect, spoke to a sellout crowd of 12,000 on the eve of Comdex, the computer industry's largest trade show. During his speech, he called on several top Microsoft managers to demonstrate new and upcoming Microsoft products, from a beta of Office 10 and the just-launched VisualStudio.net programming kit to the never-before-seen Web tablet.

The end of the browser era was a recurring theme of his talk. "The browser model ... really is showing its age," he said.

He portrayed Web-based computing, in which PCs are basically used as terminals, as too limiting at a time when more and more people will be accessing information from a range of devices. (See "Gates Says Microsoft Will Thrive.")

In a swipe at Sun Microsystems Chair Scott McNealy's oft-quoted comment that personal privacy is a lost cause and people should "get over it," Gates also said that server-based computing didn't deal satisfactorily with privacy issues. And, he said, it isn't very good at speech recognition and video applications, which Gates believes will become more and more important over time.

The alternative? Gates focused on the virtues of XML (extensible markup language), a recurring theme in all of his recent public appearances. "We're betting the company," Gates repeatedly said, on the use of XML-based software to enable all types of smart devices to share information easily.