DG: Is there anything new we should be looking forward to and are there any specific messages you want real enthusiasts about Windows CE to hear from you very specifically? The "we want you to know" kinds of questions.

JR: That's a good question. Well, you know, we think Windows CE….I'll frame it a slightly different way. When Microsoft looks out at its businesses or the businesses that we think we're in, we're clearly in the PC productivity business, or the general-purpose operating system business with Windows, trying to continue to advance the state of PCs. We're also in the enterprise business with what we've done with Windows NT.

With Windows CE -- in a broader strategy -- we're really in a distinct business, which is the appliance business. And it is a very, very different business than those other two businesses. It is designed to produce solutions for these sort of specific function devices that then connect to this broader framework. I think what that means is that there's a new computing paradigm out there -- which is this appliance computing paradigm -- where people have more and more primary, specific-function devices that then connect into this broader sort of network of information and we're playing in that space.

Which leads me to an additional observation. When I think of Windows CE, over time, increasingly, I think of our primary connection being back towards services. That's why wireless is so important. Being on the road and being able to send and receive email or get information on something that I need to do or a stock quote or make some sort of transaction. That's going to become a primary connection for these appliances. So we'll connect the services to information that happens to be residing on your server and information that happens to be residing on your PC. So these appliances are going way beyond simply being just an extension off of a PC. They're in their own sort of usage. Connected services servers, and PCs. And that's, I think, where you'll see all appliances going in general, and certainly Windows CE specifically.

DG: So I really could network my microwave to my Ethernet and download recipes into it?

JR: One of the groups that I work with is a prototyping and scenario planning group. What they do is, frankly, build the scenarios. What is it that people want to get connected? What do you want to do? I gave this demonstration about nine months ago called The Digital Living Room at one of these David Coursey conferences. We were connected to the dryer and the dryer was reporting to me that it was fluffing and doing whatever. You have to admit it's difficult to have a meaningful dialogue with your dryer. There's not a lot I want to tell or get my dryer to do.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. But where the scenarios are going is when they include sort of wireless connection. Now our scenario is: I'm in a home, it's dinnertime or I want to connect to other members of the family. It's not so interesting to send email to my wife or my son who is upstairs. It is interesting if I send email that goes out wirelessly and connects to them on a device wherever they happen to be. It's this idea of the creation of the virtual home that becomes interesting. We spend a lot of time really trying to think through the question, "What is it that people want to do?" If appliances and Windows CE specifically stand for "connected", what is the meaningful benefit of being connected? What are the solutions that customers want if they're connected?