Microsoft's Mundie Outlines Digital Home Of The Future
CES Daily

By CES Staff
14:16   01/09/99
By James K. Willcox, TWICE

Microsoft's senior VP of consumer strategy Craig Mundie outlined the company's version of connect-the-digital-dots, presenting a Universal Plug and Play initiative as a way to interconnect a broad range of PC and consumer electronics devices on a network.

During the address here at CES, Microsoft provided its vision of the digital home of the future, where portable handheld devices, electronic tablets, home PCs, TVs and AutoPCs were able to share information, resources and services without any manual configuration.

Under the Universal Plug and Play initiative -- which was described as the next phase of the Plug and Play initiative introduced by Microsoft, Intel and Compaq in 1992 -- a set of common interfaces will be developed that ensure that new devices added to the network will be recognized and automatically configured. The protocol also calls for products to include descriptor files that provide consumers with a variety of information about each device.

Among the companies backing the initiative are AMD, AT&T, Cisco, Compaq, Dell, Diamond Multimedia, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Intel, Kodak, NEC, Samsung, 3Com and Toshiba.

Likening the current situation to the lack of electrical standards in the early 1990s, Mundie said, "The computer industry is going through the same thing now. As the cost of electronics and silicon circuit implementations decline, we will be able to take these computer engines and put them anywhere they are useful."

Mundie said that while the technologies people use will converge, "the devices themselves will not." As a result, without a common interface, the market could contain hundreds of disparate devices that will not necessarily be able to connect with each other.

"The dream we all have at Microsoft is computing everywhere where it adds value," Mundie said, followed by "connecting everything" via Universal Plug and Play. "Devices that know each other and connect with each other will really be the next really big phase of computing everywhere," he said. "If we come together in an appropriate fashion, we can make significant improvements in the quality of life."

Mundie said Microsoft is adding features to new versions of Windows to allow cooperation between new classes of devices.

As broadband access to the Internet becomes more common, which Mundie expects to happen this year, users will want to be able to share access and use a single ISP. Mundie says Windows 2000 will include Internet connectivity sharing as a feature of the operating system, and he expects that Windows 98 can be retrofitted via a download.

Included in Microsoft's vision of Windows home networking are broadband access to the Internet, "networking without cracking the case" via USB and 1394 connections, Internet sharing, and of course, Universal Plug and Play. The company will release SDKs for developers at WinHEC in April.

Mundie said that 1.3 million Windows CE appliances have been sold, with more than 90,000 developers working on Windows CE applications. Mundie mentioned Sega's new Dreamcast video game system, the WebStar EchoStar/WebTv set-top box, and Clarion's AutoPC as examples of new Windows CE appliances.