Tonight marks Microsoft's final CES keynote for the forseeable future; the software giant announced late last year that CES 2012 would be Microsoft's last. Redmond will still have a presence, but Steve Ballmer will no longer kick off the show, and Microsoft will ditch its huge booth in the convention center's main hall.
But before CES bids adieu to Microsoft, Ballmer has one last keynote, which kicks off at 6:30pm Pacific time on Monday in Las Vegas, and PCMag is there to live blog it all.
One of the reasons Microsoft decided to pull out of CES, it said, is because the conference's January timeframe no longer coincides with Microsoft's product rollout schedule. In the past few years, Microsoft's major releases—like Kinect, Windows Phone, and Windows 7—have happened in late fall, so at CES, Microsoft pretty much just shared stats about how those products fared, and talked about far-off upgrades that would happen later in the year.
One of those upgrades is Windows 8, Microsoft's next-generation operating system. Redmond released a platform preview of the OS back in September, and a public beta is expected next month. Expect Ballmer to talk up the benefits of Windows 8, which includes a very Windows Phone-esque interface.
Windows Phone will likely also figure prominently. The mobile OS has been well-reviewed, but has struggled to gain market share in a space dominated by Android and Apple's iOS. Microsoft's partnership with Nokia is starting to come to fruition, however; can Windows Phone finally take off in 2012?
We're unlikely to see a revamped Xbox, meanwhile; there are rumors that it might appear at June's E3 conference, but for now, the Xbox 360 is still flying off the shelves, thanks in part to Kinect. Microsoft has been hard at work putting the Kinect to work with things other than gaming, like controlling your cable TV.
What do you want to see? Join in the live blog and let us know. Ballmer is set to take the stage around 630pm Pacific, but we'll likely start chatting around 530pm, once we get in the room. Talk to you then!