I walked the show floor quite a bit on day 2 and everywhere you looked it was HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray. Microsoft meanwhile seems to have a real winner with their MCE (Media Center Edition) that they're preparing for Windows Vista.

For me, the big thing is being able to record HD content from various sources and save it to a hard drive or stream to other places in the house. The UI is very slick and if you have an XBOX 360 then all the better.

My travels did lead to some sight seeing after the show. Jed Rose (one of the masterminds behind bringing in various Windows communities to the show) set up a number of really impressive gatherings for the various net community leaders who were there.

Steve and Marcel from Neowin were there. Nate from Betanews was around. Robert from Longhorn blogs was also there and of course Chris Pirillo who has dyed his hair red!

Kristin Hatcher from PowerUser.TV was also there. We decided we may need to get headphone based microphones for the podcast at the Microsoft booth so that we can all hear each other talk.

 

After the Microsoft community party we looked for somewhere to eat. Everything had huge lines.  But the bars didn't.  I learned something -- Margaritas are not a substitute for food.  I also discovered that Las Vegas has some sort of issue with the world trying to spin from out from under people.

Now, if I can just recover from the world trying to spin. Oye.