— Photo: AFP

INNOVATIVE: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates shows his vision of the interactive bedroom of the future at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Las Vegas: Servers were for corporate computing. That was then. It's time to blur such distinctions. With so many homes worldwide having multiple PCs and vast amounts of entertainment accessible cheaply on DVDs — or at the end of a cable, the time has come for a Home Server — a software clearing house for the family which will smartly integrate a variety of PCs, printers, music and cinema players and TV.

This was the vision for 2007 that Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates unveiled, in his 10th appearance at the world's largest personal technology expo, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which he launched with his customary event-eve keynote address on Sunday night.

A home server will automatically back up important information and allow family members to create a central store of their photos, videos and critical documents. Hewlett Packard is the first player to announce, for later this year, a MediaSmart Server based on the Microsoft software.

Almost inevitably, the event was used by the software giant to build up expectations for its new version of the Windows operating system — Vista — due for global launch.

To underline its mantra: ``easier, safer and more fun,'' Mr. Gates showed some new features apparently added after the last test version became available — such as the ability to go ``Back to the Future,'' that is, revert to the penultimate version of any document.

A demonstration of a desktop working background with full motion video was another feature greeted with huge applause by an audience that had queued up for two hours before the event to hear the Microsoft co-founder's annual take on directions in consumer technology.

This year may also see PC makers combine the sense of touch with the computer screen: TouchSmart PCs are expected to expand the penetration of computers to new dummy customers who are challenged even by having to hit a keyboard.

Over 14,000 attendees and vendors from 130 countries are taking part in the four-day event that is conducted some what bizarrely in conference centres which seamlessly morph into casinos and games machines for which Las Vegas is better known.

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