On Saturday, November 4^th, a live telecast from Microsoft’s World Headquarters in Redmond, Washington was simultaneously screened at thirty locations, including the AMC Veterans 24 Movie Complex located on Anderson Road just north of Waters Avenue in the Town and Country area of Tampa. The occasion was the release of Microsoft’s latest product, "Money 2001". This product is an updated release of Microsoft’s personal finance management program that can help one track spending, make a personal budget, plan investment strategies and generally manage one’s finances. Details on this product can be obtained at http://www.microsoft.com/money.

A number of Tampa Bay area PC user groups were invited to support the local screening and to promote their groups at each screening. Three local groups participated: the Clearwater based Tampa Bay PC users group, the Brandon based Greater Tampa PC users group and our own Tampa based TPCUG. The TPCUG was represented by Mary Sheridan and her daughter Michelle, Jenny Lind Olin, Bob LaFave, Bruce Register and myself. The local coordinator for Microsoft, working out of her Orlando office, was Mary Sue Cameron. Some 214 attendees were present to view the local screening. The majority came predominantly from Pinellas, but many had traveled from Manatee, Pasco, Polk and Hernando counties. We hope a number of new members will join our group from Hillsborough and surrounding counties.

Microsoft touted this as a "Microsoft Extreme Event" and had previously staged at least four other product releases in this manner, although never before in Tampa. The Clearwater PC users group had previously supported an event in Clearwater. I inspected the Microsoft web page devoted to the event on Friday November 2^nd and saw that New York had over 900 people pre-registered for the New York screening. Most locations had one to five hundred pre-registered attendees. Each attendee received information concerning our group, a T-shirt and a CD providing a sixty day trial of the "Money 2001" program.

What was interesting to me was the technology involved to simultaneously telecast the promotion to 30 sites nationwide. The broadcast commenced locally at 1 PM, or 10 AM on the west coast. Is this the wave of the future? For two whole hours the local captive audience was mesmerized for a single commercial. I for one will want to do this again and I hate to watch regular network TV because of all those annoying commercial breaks, not that the PBS stations are much better with their sponsor promotions between programs. I for one have not jumped on the Time Warner bandwagon to get a cable modem as I find my $77 cable TV bill exorbitant already and do not wish to pay an extra $39 to receive RoadRunner Service. Yes, I have deluxe service with beautifully clear reception and the multimedia-streaming video-on-demand. At any time I can watch any one of a hundred just released movies, pause the transmission for a meal and resume watching exactly as if I was controlling a VCR. This article will reach our editor by means of my $21.95 AOL service, which it has recently bid to tie up with the Australian news group magnate owner of Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch.

What also struck me was that none of the Microsoft presenters appeared to be over 25. Everything was cool! Is this the wave of the future! The two hour tele-broadcast lost a little in resolution on the really big screen. To me the white noise was a little disconcerting. As my main function was to be the door greeter, I missed the introductions and started in twenty minutes after the start, but caught the full commercial impact of the "Extreme Event." I took a vacant seat on the front row of the upper tier next to the technician who was in control of the projector and the external feed. The theater I estimated could readily seat up to 300 attendees. The first up for me live from Redmond, who also had a local live audience, was an Austrian born Microsoft employee named Claudia Andrea or was it Andrea Claudia. Everything was cool and Andrea had a charming accent and a wonderful command of the English language and could really command her keyboard and mouse drags and clicks beautifully. In short order we witnessed "Encarta", "Encarta.com", a true reference resource, "Mid Town Madness II", a video driving game, and the video golf game, "Links 2001". Andrea then passed over the presentation to Microsoft’s MSN Explorer product manager, Mike Nichols, who demonstrated many of the latest Explorer features, such as how to filter out SPAM, obtain free long distance voice phone calls, get MSN news for up to date election coverage and the good life in general.

Next up was Bill Nye who demonstrated Windows ME and how this product allowed one to snap save the entire operating system such that retrieval of a system status to a prior date and time of saving was readily possible. This is something I hope I will not need to do too often, but it is good to know that as a resort to sanity one can always go back in time. Since I had changed screen resolutions and switched between large and small fonts, I would have enjoyed this new operating system’s save feature. Next up before the real finale came the Dutch born gamester, that is gamester, not gangster, John Degleman. John gets paid by Microsoft to play games all day and possibly all night! The products introduced included "About Games", "Sidewinder" and the really exciting features available utilizing "Voice Command and Control." With the "Game Voice" product, true gamesmanship can be enhanced by simultaneously chatting to your opponents as one plays over the Internet with a possible 64 simultaneous channels of communication. Finally some precious few remaining minutes were devoted to "Money 2001" and the improved import and archival features available. For these features and others the Microsoft web site tells all and sells this essential product at http://www.microsoft.com/money. If all this information was not enough for those present, our local Microsoft coordinator then introduced each of the local user group presidents and awarded 14 door prizes, including copies of many Microsoft products and three additional T-shirts. For me this was a most worthwhile products demonstration, and I hope to attend future "Microsoft Extreme Events". u