6:25pm We’re kicking back in the Engadget VIP balcony at the Hilton. Paul is on the keys, Ryan on camera. We’ve just gotten the warning that things are about to start.

6:34 Still waiting!

6:36 The thumpy music is getting louder and the big-screen graphics busier, so we must be close.

6:37 Ladies and gentlemen …. Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association. He’s giving us the stats on the show. IT’S REALLY BIG!

6:42 The intro just keeps going. Now there’s a video about Microsoft’s vision. See the comments to this post for links to live video streams.

6:44 Ladies and gentlemen … Bill Gates!
Bill is glad to be named Person of the Year along with Melinda and Bono. But he remembers when the PC got the award in 1982. Mostly straight quotes from Bill from here on …

“We’ve talked about this as the decade of digital lifestyle, the decade of digital workstyle. It’s not just one application that makes it happen. It’s the fact that as you adopt these things, they really go together.

“I thought I’d start off and show a scenario that we think will be real in the next four years.

(demo of home panel touch screen with family pictures, calendars, a map)

“The family has decided to share their location with the other members of the family, so we’re able to track that. Here we’ve got some news that picks the items that are of interest to us. There’s a storm here that’s interrupting the supply chain of a lot of companies including mine. I touch the clip to say I’d like to track that video on my way to work, so it’s transferred to my cellphone as I go to work.

“At work .. instead of using a password I use my fingerprint. I see a lot of information including that news item I’ve been tracking. We set up a conference call of people who are tracking this issue. Here’s the article annoted to see how it affects us.

“On my tablet … what I’d like to do is select a chart and move it to my desktop or drag it into this video conference. It was actually created, I see, by Thomas Anderson, so I’m interested in bringing him into the conference…

“Toward the end of the day I get notice that I need to leave earlier for the airport to make my flight …

“When I get to the airport, I put my phone down on this table, and now I have my full desktop. I put this business card on the table. It sees it and recognizes it. I’ve got a little note I made during the conversation. I can see the information being downloade to my phone … added to my contact list.

(Bill gets a press release flashed to the screen for his fingerprinted approval)

“As I work, the screen knows exactly how much time I have to work before I have to leave …. It’s a very simple thing to have all these devices connected. The phone is very different; the idea of meetings is very different … that’s because we’ve taken software and put it at the center. We see that in so many areas. I think five or six years ago if you’d said software would be so important in making phone calls, music, photos, TV better…. this really is a symptom of the great progress we have here in the digital decade.

(AT THIS POINT BILL IS REHASHING STUFF YOU ALREADY KNOW - SOFTWARE WILL LET US DO MORE AND CONNECT PEOPLE ETC ETC)

“It only catches up to us in the way it changes the way entertainment gets done .. TV where we pick the news segments we want. We find the video that wouldn’t have been available in a broadcast system. A huge component of this is the investment we’ve made in the Windows platform.

(BILL IS GOING TO SHOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE “2-FOOT INTERFACE,” AKA PC, AND THE “TEN-FOOT INTERFACE” IN THE LIVING ROOM)

DEMO: WINDOWS VISTA. PIX COMING …. (WE MISSED THE NAME OF THE GUY DOING THE DEMO)

“QuickTabs. Tabbed browsing with a twist.” LIVE PREVIEWS OF DIFFERENT TABS. HEAVY USE OF TRANSPARENCIES AND MOTION IN THE INTERFACE.

PARENTAL CONTROLS ON GAMES. “As a parent, you can decide if you’re comfortable with your child playing that game on that PC.”