Bill Gates delivers the wrong message to 120,000 attendees

Last night, Bill Gates took the stage at CES to deliver his ninth keynote speech in as many years. Yet, Gates announced nothing new, noting that Longhorn, the next generation of Windows due in 2006, is Microsoft's next purely consumer offering. Instead, he emphasized partnerships with manufacturers such as LG and Tivo, and noted the shortcomings of existing CE products.

But the unspoken message was that Microsoft products don't work reliably. Despite the fact that no new Microsoft products were being shown, he experienced no fewer than two blue screens of death during his presentation. Further, one of Microsoft's Tablet PCs couldn't reach the Internet during the demonstration, and Microsoft's Media Center PC couldn't display photographs of Gates and Conan O'Brian out on the town in Las Vegas.

There is already a buzz at the show that this is the year that the CE makers take back the crown of the sexiest consumer products from the computer vendors like Microsoft. Gate's keynote sent the message that Microsoft isn't a serious consumer electronics player. After all, when was the last time your TV crashed?