Live at D6: Windows 7
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer share the stage at D6 on Tuesday with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)
Tonight at the D6 conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates will take the stage together. The dual interview, to be presided over by The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, will be, in part, an exit interview. Gates is stepping down from his full-time role at Microsoft (corrected: he will remain as chairman of the board) in July. We will also get an early demo of Windows 7. As Dan Farber reports, we'll see a little bit of the interface, which promises to be very shiny. I'm hoping that we go a bit deeper than that: that there's news about robustness, open architecture, and maybe even the object-oriented file system we were supposed to have in Vista.
Here's the liveblog:
Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
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As I said early on in the liveblog, I was unable to watch and report on the interview and to keep up with the comments at the same time. I considered my job to report on what was happening on stage, and to add my perspective from time to time, which if you'll look at the log, you'll see I did only sparingly.
I do feel that, though, the community didn't have enough of a voice during this liveblog, so I'm looking at a way for next time to add a backchannel that people can talk in, without requiring the liveblogger (me) to monitor and approve comments.
As far as bias: A tech reporter cannot win. Express an opinion either way and you come across as a Microsoft apologist or as a hater. So to that end, let me just say that I've been studying technology, business, and Microsoft for years, and my opinion on the company and its products is a bit more complex than "pro" or "con." And take this for what it's worth: I just built my own Vista PC. Nobody forced me to. It was my choice.
Also keep in mind that during this interview, Walt was really trying to nail Bill and Steve on the "failure" of Vista. That was an overriding theme of the interview.
-Rafe