LAS VEGAS -- So this is a bit obvious: Microsoft is a really big company.

Seeing its presentation here at CES really brought that home. I made a few laps around the Microsoft "booth" today -- its 16,000 square feet of carpet so well paded you want to lay down and take a nap on it -- and got a physical sense of the breadth of the company's products and "partner ecosystem." Countless kiosks for Xbox 360, Games for Windows, Zune, Windows Live, Windows Vista... all the big product names regular readers are familiar with.

And this is only the consumer-facing stuff; never mind the business products. Seeing them set out so pretty, all in one place was and with all their various features up and running gave me a better image of Microsoft's scope than a walk around the company's large, forrested campus ever has. I guess that's partly the point of this show.