Photos: Microsoft's workplace of the future

CIW's DigiDesk workstation (seen with Tom Gruver) is operable by touch screen.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

A dual-monitor workstation with integrated Tablet PC and Smartphone are just some of the multidevice wireless-integration devices that CIW envisions for the future workplace.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

Physical objects like the PDA (personal digital assistant) and Webcam at this workstation will be labeled with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and other metadata technology for automatic identification and syncing.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

Microsoft's RoundTable, a multivenue video conferencing system due for release in 2007, came from CIW prototypes.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

CIW uses the scenario of a pharmaceutical company dealing with pharmacies, government compliance, manufacturing and other chain links to illustrate new cross-enterprise software capabilities.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

Microsoft sees Tablet PCs as a possible tool for biometric logins--authentications employing things like fingerprints and handwriting--in place of usernames and passwords.

Daniel Sheehan Photography

CIW includes a mock hotel room used to illustrate the possibility of collaboration and communications from remote locations. A pharmaceutical company representative, for example, could participate in a video conference from her Tablet PC.

Daniel Sheehan Photography