PDC: Keynote Impressions

If you liked Napoleon Dynamite, you should find the keynote to PDC05 -- specifically try and nab the Billg video with Napoleon Dynamite. Fantastic.

I have to admit, I have a hard time sitting still for 3 hours -- even if it's content geared for developers. Even so, I enjoyed the keynote. All the demos were done well... if you're into IE, I especially like the tabbed browsing preview window (you can see thumbnails of all the tabs on a single page). Quite cool.

As for Vista, it's not anything of course that hasn't been shown before, but it's still quite cool. Much easier to switch between applications (not just tabbing, but the "windows key-space" combination), search, and the parental controls.

I especially liked seeing Scott, Anders, Chris, and Don's code samples -- it's nice to see that granularity during a keynote, and of course you'd only see that at PDC. Specifically they coded up some Indigo and Atlas samples.

Jim Allchin's portion was great too -- but I do have one complaint. Jim announced a great discount on an i-Mate JasJar device, making the device available to all attendees for $150. (It's normally about $1000.) Instantly people started trickling out at a rapid rate, and when I left the keynote at the end and turned on my laptop, the CommNet site said the device was already sold out.

Now, I may not have been eligible as a Microsoft employee, but I imagine this will ruffle feathers a bit as I've already heard grumblings about the device selling out before the keynote was even over.

More updates to come!