Each year at the Consumer Electronics Show, Bill Gates lays out Microsoft's vision for all sorts of technology in the home, and pieces of that vision have started to appear in the consumer market. The products are also shown together sometimes in simulated home settings. But it's relatively unusual to see it all put together in a real home -- unless you visit the living room of someone who works at the company.
That's what I did this week, spending time with two Microsoft eHome employees, Hakan Olsson and Scott Evans, who take part in a take-home program for testing such products as Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server. Theirs were elaborate, high-end setups -- complete with a 108-inch home theater screen, in Olsson's case; and computers neatly tucked away in a crawlspace (accessed over the network), in Evans' case.
But the question is whether this type of stuff is ready for the broader consumer market. So I asked about the challenges they faced in trying to put everything together and use it.
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