Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan just wrapped up their keynote presentation. There were some impressive demos showing off the new Device Experience Platform. Judging by crowd reaction to the demos, device staging will be one of the most exciting new features in Windows 7.

 Aptly, Jon focused his attention on the fundamentals of Windows (side note, if you haven't been following the E7 Windows engineering blog, you should. You can find it at http://blogs.msdn.com/e7). Live demos showed that boot time for Windows 7 has been improved significantly over Vista (this is due in part to system services and drivers being loaded in parallel in Windows 7, vs. serially in Windows Vista and earlier). Shut down time was quicker, with new tools helping to diagnose and fix services that prevent smooth system shut down. Power management is better in Windows 7 too -- the xPerf performance toolkit already available on WHDC (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/perftools.mspx) was used to help troubleshoot and demonstrate improvements in efficiency.

 Steven demonstrated opportunities that Windows 7 enables to differentiate the user experience, focusing on the new Device eXperience Platform (DXP), new form factors and PC designs, and new interaction models (sensors and multi touch). The live demos of DXP using pre-release M3 bits garnered enthusiastic reactions from the crowd. I'm convinced this will be one of the most exciting features in Windows 7, and will have a significant positive effect on customers and the PC eco-system.

 As noted in an earlier blog post, you can read more about new features for developers in the Windows 7 Developer Guide, located at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Win7DeveloperGuide.

Update: You can now view Steven and Jon's keynote speech online at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx.

Keith Boyd, Sr. Content Publishing Manager [MSFT]