If you had to pick a hero and a villain from the dawn of personal computing, then the hero would most likely be Steve Jobs from Apple and the villain, Bill Gates from Microsoft.
So when Bill Gates’ 2005 CES keynote demonstration with Conan O’Brien of the new Windows Media Center was plagued with a series of crashes and a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), the audience and the press were nothing short of “amused.”
This video is a compilation of all the on-stage Microsoft failures from CES 2005. Here’s a timeline of the technical problems and Conan O’Brien’s jokes. Enjoy the video!
- 00:50 Bill Gates demo of a slideshow on the Windows Media Center running on the Xbox freezes.
- 00:55 Conan jokes, “Right now 9 people are being fired.”
- 01:20 Freezes again.
- 01:30 Conan jokes, “Did I mention there’s gambling in this town? Feel free to hit the tables. You can come back when we get this thing working.”
- 01:50 Freezes again.
- 02:00 Conan jokes, ” Who is in charge of Microsoft… oh.”
- 02:15 Freezes again.
- 03:00 Freezes again. The presenter blames it on Internet access.
- 03:24 BSOD
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Frank Wilson is a retired teacher with over 30 years of combined experience in the education, small business technology, and real estate business. He now blogs as a hobby and spends most days tinkering with old computers. Wilson is passionate about tech, enjoys fishing, and loves drinking beer.
Bob
i was there! i watched this live!!
diaperspider
gates was evil. now he’s nice.
Tom
Steve Jobs does not contribute to charity, that makes him the hero? Gates has the largest philanthropic charitable organization, that makes him the villan?