What Steve Ballmer said at Dell World

SHY AND SOFTLY SPOKEN Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has graced the Dell World conference with his enthusiasm and used his stage time to talk up Skype, Lync, Windows and Windows 8.

Khidr Suleman from our sister IT news web site V3.co.uk is our man at the conference, and he has kept us up to date with what was going on.

"Steve jumps straight into talking about how Windows has been reimagined - technology is a business of change," he said, reminding us that these sorts of things are always full of bluff and puff.

"Windows PC is still the most popular platform on the planet," said Ballmer in another helpful reminder that there are alternatives out there.

Those are not for Ballmer however, and rather than discuss them he whipped out a Dell laptop running the developer preview of Windows 8, something that instantly disappointed Khidr.

"No touch screen on the laptop - isn't the main feature of Windows 8 the touch screen functionality?," Khidr asked. "Still no major announcements - but there is still time for Steve to remedy this."

There was time, but there was no major announcement, like a Windows tablet for example, or a new Zune. Instead Khidr and the rest of the attendees were told how great and exciting the cloud is, making them, we presume, refer to their calendars and check that it was not still 2008. "Steve is going full throttle on the cloud - it makes sense to put workloads in the cloud," he heard.

There followed a demonstration of how well Skype works with Microsoft, big brash news from Microsoft on the day that the Iphone 4S is released, and then Ballmer returned to the stage to say that his talk was over.

"And with that Steve and Michael Dell make a quick exit - no major announcements, but an enthusiastic performance for Ballmer as always," said our man in Austin Texas. µ