In his first inaugural speech to the CES 2009 faithful, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, decided to talk not so much about the new technology of Windows 7 or gee-whiz new Microsoft innovation but to talk about how Microsoft will save you some money over their preternatural enemy, Apple computer.

This is a trite argument but one that has worked before and one still relevant in today's rough economy. "At this time economically when people are struggling to make every dollar count" the choice that offers the most power and most value for the money is a PC, Ballmer said.

Pivoting from the power of the purse to the PC, Ballmer also announced that Windows 7--the code name for the successor to Windows Vista which is probably the worst failure for Microsoft in 10 years since Windows ME, will be released as early as this holiday season, as late as 2010. Whew!

And one last point from Ballmer and Co. was that Microsoft was pushing towards being the being the king of the "three screens". That is, (1) TV (2) computer and (3) telephone, which will all become all networked together somehow, somewhere on an internet cloud in the future with Microsoft playing the role of genie and granting all three wishes to the US consumer by 2010, or so Microsoft hopes it will if they have their druthers.

Not exactly sure how Microsoft plans on pulling this off, but if I were you I wouldn't laugh at the guys in belts and suspenders from Redmond. They have done it before and they may do it again.