Stories by: Robert L. Mitchell

Move over, Laura Croft. At the EmTech08 Emerging Technologies Conference Thursday, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie introduced the audience to “Laura,” a disembodied face that serves as a robotic receptionist - and a technology demonstration of spatial computing in action. Mundie, who is chief research and strategy officer, gave the demonstration of “spatial computing” during the keynote speech this morning.

If, like me, you travel regularly with your laptop between different locations, you know how annoying it can be to get even a simple document printed to the right device and in the right format. And if you forget to choose the right printer when you come into a new location? Everything disappears into the wrong queue, only to spit out in a torrent when you connect at the other location.

OK, it's not perfect. But Windows Vista on a new PC is perfectly serviceable for many users. In some ways, in fact, Vista is a better operating system than Windows XP. Unfortunately, XP's heir apparent is also the most derided and discounted Microsoft operating system since Windows Me.

It may look like Windows Vista. It shares the same code base as Vista. It even rolls in Vista's first Service Pack. But in terms of customer adoption plans, Windows Server 2008 is no Vista.

Don't say you weren't warned. Your 32-bit Windows applications are going the way of analog television: Unless they're upgraded, in the next few years they'll go dark.

Windows Vista has been slow to catch on in business. Could Windows Server 2008 ride to the rescue? The new server operating system shares the same code base as Windows Vista and includes some features that are optimized to work with Vista.