A précis of PDC 2008

PDC 2008 is finally over. Microsoft had ensured a gala event which was impressive to say the least. Despite the current financial turmoil, Microsoft had put up quite a show and had organized parties every night. As expected, Microsoft had a lot to tell about its upcoming technologies which it had communicated in a more or less satisfying manner.

Given the Vista Debacle (which is actually not true mainly because of media hype and Apple’s infamous switcher ads – Windows Vista has sold over 200 million copies to date), Microsoft had to cook up something special for its first  showcase of Windows 7 and they have succeeded in doing so. Windows 7 was a major hit among the attendees and it also being touted as a major hit even a year before its release. Though architecturally there is not much of a change (which is in one way good since there will be no nagging compatibility problems), the UI is being overhauled and fine tuned. It can essentially be viewed as Windows Vista Release 2. Of course there are also other innovative features coming up such as AERO snaps,surface based touch features improved support for Multiple processor core now (up to 256 cores), a more customizable UAC, improved start menu and task bar, ribbonised versions of WordPad and Paint,Smart Network Power that intelligently supplies power only to those devices that need it etc. 

Microsoft's has stripped out certain bundled applications from Windows and deliver them instead via the optional and free Windows Live Essentials application suite. This however is not a ploy to make the OS less bloated or cleaner. Windows  Photo Gallery, Windows  Movie Maker, Windows  Mail, Windows  Messenger  used to be bundled with Windows.  As zpart of Windows Live, Microsoft can update these applications as frequently as needed instead of the time gap between subsequent OS releases.

A Windows “Longhorn” type application called Device Stage will aggregate devices such as mobile phones, PDA’s, Media players etc and provide a consistent UI to access their features. This is a wonderful idea if implemented as advertised. There is native support for Blu Ray DVD (hence delivering the knock out punch on HD-DVD) , Wireless USB, Ultra Wide Band and Bluetooth 2.1. Another remnant of Longhorn is the castle based networking now available in Windows 7 as HomeGroups. It lets Windows 7 PCs identify and connect to each other on a home network, decide exactly which computer resources you want to share and, optionally, with whom and allows you to see and access the resources that are shared by other PCs in your HomeGroup. Microsoft has given all the attendees copies of Windows 7 M3 which is slightly an older build compared to the one they demonstrated there.

The problem with PDC 2008 was that the Windows 7 presentation was so good that it eclipsed the other main attraction, Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the Cloud Based Operating system which people had originally thought to be Windows Strata. Most of the people present there couldn’t make out much of it. Some people vaguely recall that it was a version of Windows Server hosted only on Microsoft datacenter servers. Underlying it is complex virtualization technologies and automated fail-over, which end users will be oblivious of, so this essentially translates to 5 9's of uptime. There was also a lot of confusion about Live Framework and Live services Platform.

Microsoft also launched Office Live Workspaces which is similar to Google Docs. It also plans to launch stripped down versions of its Office suite on the web called Office Web Applications sometime later this year.  Lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will available through a browser. One can create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents.It is supposed to provide a consistent Office experience  regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser.Office Web Applications will be released as part of the  Office 14 wave of products.They have not yet revealed the pricing model for this service.

Of course, there were also presentations on latest version of Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2010) and .NET (.NET Framework 4). There was however very little talk about the successor of Office 2007 (Office 12) -  Office “14” (Microsoft has skipped 13 for superstitious reasons). Microsoft also talked about Windows Server 2008 R2 and also distributed hardcopies of it . Also Microsoft plans to upgrade Windows Mobile 6.1 with a Internet Explorer 6 like rendering technologies. This a major breakthrough for the Windows Mobile world. It is also supposed to have said that Windows Mobile 6.5 would ship sometime in late 2009, which unfortunately may be a bit late for it. Windows Mobile faces stiff competition from iPhone, Google’s Android and to a certain extent from Blackberry.

There was also a lot about Microsoft Research  like the Microsoft Surface software development kit, a new version of the Microsoft Worldwide Telescope, and new hardware sensors . It also unveiled Boku, a project aimed at getting kids into programming. Other Topics were Microsoft Concurrency & Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) Toolkit 2008, which enables developers to create loosely coupled concurrent and distributed applications, the DryadLINQ parallel application programming environment, the SecondLight rear-projection technology for the Surface table and the RoboChamps student technology competition.

And finally, since PDC is a mega event, it is held once in two to three years only as a new platform emerges from Redmond. But it seems it is planning its next PDC for November 09. It will probably coincide more with the then already released or to be shortly released Windows 7  along with the true dawning of Windows Azure and the Cloud.