Examiner.com

For decades Microsoft has been synonymous with the PC, creating the global personal computer revolution with its ubiquitous Windows operating system. This fall, it’s going to offer a significant technological advance beyond the PC -- the PC.

In this case, PC stands for “personal cloud.” Microsoft gave the world a glimpse of what the personal cloud will look like Thursday at its Financial Analysts Meeting 2010, an annual event with financial analysts who follow the fortunes -- or lack thereof -- of the publicly traded company.

The daylong event at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., featured keynote addresses by CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives, financial details and hints at upcoming new products like a rumored tablet-style computer.

Time was carved out on the schedule for Brad Brooks, corporate vice president of Windows Consumer Marketing and Product Management, to demonstrate what Microsoft’s personal cloud technology will look like when it rolls out later this year.

The personal cloud enables people to better connect their Windows 7 computers to other computers on their own personal network, as well as to mobile devices, other non-Windows devices and beyond via the Web, Brooks said.

The conduit for all this sharing is Windows Live, the cloud-based version of the Windows 7 operating system, which first came out in October of last year. For the uninitiated, “cloud computing” is the catch-all term for software and other computing capabilities that are delivered over the Internet rather than just installed on your computer or closed computer network.

Brooks started his personal cloud demo by going to Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, to find some music. He downloaded an MP3 copy of a song by the rock group ZZ Top to his Windows 7 laptop but also, simultaneously, to his personal cloud. SkyDrive is the Microsoft brand for an online file storage and sharing service.

From there, Brooks was able to play back the song on any number of devices, including an Onkyo receiver on stage with him and a smartphone running Windows Phone 7, the coming new mobile operating system from Microsoft.

“Every device that's now connected to my personal cloud can have access to that content,” he explained as the ‘80’s guitar band’s music played in the background.

Brooks also pointed out that while he may download music to his Phone 7 device while away from home, when he returns home and plugs the device into its charger, it automatically syncs its content to other devices on his home network.

He went on to demonstrate how the personal cloud facilitates taking, editing and sharing of photos, too. Brooks transferred photos taken with his Phone 7 device to his Windows 7 computer to edit them in a program called Photo Gallery. He showed the audience a series of similar group photos of about a half dozen guys on a soccer field, but each photo had a little bit of a problem: In one photo, one guy was blinking; in another, another guy’s head was blocked by a soccer ball. With the use of a new feature called Photo Fuse, Brooks was able to replace the bad image of one guy with a good image of him so that in the edited photo, everybody’s visible, smiling and not blinking -- a version of Photoshop, if you will.
While impressive, I’m a little skeptical that such image editing wouldn’t be apparent in photos with variations in framing or distance, but Photo Fuse does offer something of a “wow” factor.

Then, like with the music, Brooks demonstrated how with the personal cloud, he could share that photo via SkyDrive with other users who are also on Windows Live.

Later, Brooks demonstrated how the personal cloud can be used to share Office 2010 documents such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

“We think this is a very compelling experience, not just on portable devices, but across all different types of devices as we really take the connections across the personal cloud to new levels,” Brooks said as he wound up his presentation.

He also played around with a prototype “Slate” computer, the working brand name for a tablet-style device Microsoft has been developing, on and off, as a competitor to the popular Apple iPad. Ballmer and other Microsoft executives discussed the Slate project during the analyst meeting but continued to be vague about exactly what it will look like, what components will go into it and when it will come to market.
“As soon as we can” was as specific as Ballmer could be when an analyst asked for a delivery date. He said Slate will run Windows and will be powered by an Intel processor, but maybe not the Intel OakTrail processor expected out in 2011 designed for the tablet market.

“We’re not waiting for Oak Trail,” Ballmer said.

As for the personal cloud technology that Brooks demonstrated, it will become available as updates on existing Windows 7 machines starting this fall and will be shipped already installed on new Windows 7 computers beginning in the third quarter, as well as on Windows Phone 7 devices, which are scheduled for release by the end of the year.

Will the personal cloud catch on as much as has the personal computer? It remains to be seen.
Everything works perfectly and smoothly during the demo and, if it doesn’t, some underling is probably standing backstage, nervously pulling on his shirt collar and worrying about his job. And it remains to be seen whether consumers will give Phone 7 a chance once mobile devices actually come out. After all, Windows Mobile OS has slipped to the back of the smartphone OS field behind BlackBerry, iPhone and Google Android. In addition, Microsoft suffered the embarrassment of pulling it’s heavily marketed Kin line of smartphones out of stores after only six weeks of disappointing sales.

Microsoft may have an impressive “personal cloud” but the market will determine if it’s just -- water vapor.