With this competition, Microsoft hopes to identify great talent and spur a dialogue between the ID field, the PC industry and their shared customers regarding what makes a great PC fit their customers‘ digital lifestyle.

This year‘s competition theme will focus on designs that help people fuel their passion, whether it‘s music, traveling or photography. This year‘s next-generation PC designs must contain scenarios and features that address ways to help people pursue their passions more easily, more powerfully and more enjoyably -- and even how to help users obtain results they had never thought possible.

This is also the first year the competition will look at software and hardware as part of the PC design. Applicants will need to focus not only on exterior design, shape and color, but they must pay attention to programs that will enhance what people feel passionate about. Successful entries will clearly define and thoroughly understand the audiences that the PC is designed for as well as the culture, lifestyle, habits and practices of the user.

Entries can be submitted till 14 December and the eligible ones will be reviewed January through April 2008 by a distinguished panel of Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) -member judges from the international PC and industrial design community in addition to representatives from leading hardware manufacturers. The entries will be scored by the criterias like innovation, user experience and interaction, aesthetics, windows software and ecology.

Five winners will be selected, and up to five honorable mentions may be chosen by the judges. From 15 February 2008 to 15 March 2008 the selected finalists will be posted on the Next-Gen PC Design Competition web site, www.nextgendesigncomp.com, where the public will be invited to vote for its favorite entry to determine the Public‘s Choice Award. The winners will be announced in May 2008 and honored at the 2008 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.