Apple CEO Steve Ballmer delivered the Microsoft (MS) keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2009) in Las Vegas Yesterday, confirming observers’ speculation that he’s something of a showman — but no Bill Gates.

Ballmer takes the stage: He’s adopted the ‘blue sweater’ uniform
but does he have the charisma to follow Gates’ act?

Well, it is his first time and he appears to have potential. You can view the entire keynote here and make up your own mind.

Nevertheless…

The main event at CES was the official unveiling of the first beta version of Windows 7, successor to thhe the dynasty that has disappointed many users for several generations, or at least since Windows XP was rendered more or less stable after a long history of updates.

ZDNet’s Ed Bott, who’s at CES, sees, “plenty of small but significant improvements in Windows 7.”

Among them, one-click access to the Preview pane, a simplified shut-down menu, simplified user account controls and an enhanced back-up system.

Although Windows 7 is based on the same code structure as Windows Vista, those who have had the chance to try it say it is faster than Vista and ofers other user-experience enhancements. At trhis stage, the feature set for Windoes should be more or less complete but things can still change between now and the Q4 2009 official release target date that MS is still sticking to. On the other hand, we all recall the multiple release delays for Vista, so nobody in the industry is really counting on getting Windows 7 for Christmas this year.

Stop the presses!

Top MS exec Bill Veghte told CNet.com yesterday that Windows 7 is ‘no certainty’ for Q4 2009.

Here we go, again…