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By the time you read this the doors to the biggest consumer electronics show in the world will be open in bustling Las Vegas, Nevada. For those who’ve never been there, this is also the technology swag mecca; tons of goodies. If you go to CES, plan to pack an empty suitcase worth of goodies to bring back.

CES 2008 kicked off last night with what is being billed somewhat sadly as Bill Gates “last” CES keynote. He’s hosted the CES keynote 11 times and 8 times consecutively, with the first in 1994. You can watch it at microsoft.com/ces using Microsoft Silverlight platform inside your browser.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s cross OS compatible answer to Flash and being widely toted (by them) as a viable alternative. While writing this post and listening to Gates keynote in a separate tab using Windows Vista Silverlight crashed Firefox. I decided to try Silverlight on the Mac with Firefox instead and see how that went. I’ll update before the end of this post if it doesn’t crash (Update: it didn’t on the Mac, go figure).

Summarizing Gates Keynote
In case you don’t want to sit through the Gates keynote, here’s a brief rundown on what happens.

The Xbox 360 is showing prominently in the living room in the “if you believe in magic” video opening as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates enters the stage. He’s dressed in typical Gates attire, a drab purple sweater. He segues into a spoof video of his last day at Microsoft which is funny. Did he just play Mario on a Guitar Hero guitar? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bono and others are included.

Afterwards Gates shares statistics that PC sales have increased 13% over the last year and then has offers a demo of a program that makes panaromas out of pictures, looks baked into Windows. And then to Microsoft’s perceived geek tabletop of the future: Surface. I love the idea behind touchscreen activity but touch doesn’t work very well for everything.

A keyboard is really important for typing. I wonder if Surface will display a QWERTY keyboard and let you type on it? How will that would feel typing on a flat surface? I see IGT (disclaimer: I own IGT stock) is one of the Surface partners. Does this mean we’ll see this used a lot more in future slot machines?

Robbie Bach comes out on stage next and shares stats on Xbox Live and other media properties. Microsoft has now passed the 10 million subscribers mark and they currently sell more online content than the Wii and PS3 combined.

Zune - The new versions are doing well according to Bach. Microsoft believes Zune has become a clear alternative to iPod. Zune Social now has 1.5 million members. There is some discussion of Zune cards which are similar to Xbox Live gamer cards, only focusing a la last.fm on activity around/inside Zune like your favorite songs and artists (e.g my zune card is located at: http://social.zune.net/member/XBoxTDavid).

Next up: Gates on the future - he holds a device that you can point at people, places and things and it recognizes them. Reminded me of scanning bar codes on the useful inventory program Delicious Library.

Close on a rocking note
Bach and Gates bring out Guitar Hero in a $20 bet. Bach has a famous Xbox Live player playing Welcome to the Jungle and Gates brings in a ringer: Slash! The crowd has what sounded like to me the biggest keynote applause of the night for the former Guns ‘N Roses guitarist. Microsoft upstaged by a guitar legend?

The Slash applause factor sums up the keynote which was lackluster. Nothing that new or revolutionary. If this is Gate’s last keynote ever, it went out with a whimper.

Update 1/7/08 10am PST: Wow, looks like I’m not the only one unimpressed with the keynote. Duncan at Techcrunch says it sucked. Let me save you some more time by showing you one of the best parts: the Gates last day video below:

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

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