In the sprawling digital lifestyle Microsoft booth, UK start-up Exertris  showcased the first Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded stationary exercise bike (MSRP:$6,000) designed for playing PC based video games during workouts. The user’s pedal power plays a vital role in the on-screen action. 

James Briant, software director at Exertris, explains why they chose Windows XP Embedded. "The Exertris concept is all about the gaming experience; we needed a platform that would allow us to go ahead and develop great games without drawing on the team’s resources to fix computing and networking issues."



Briant is an accomplished designer of console games and has worked with Nintendo's Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.





David Ursino, Lead Product Manager Embedded
& Appliance Platforms Group Microsoft, explains in our audio
interview (wav) the interactive exercise concept. He envisions a day
when the Exertris bike will be standard equipment at the Pro
Sports Club, the upscale Bellevue, WA health club with thousands of
Microsoft and Nintendo employees as members.

Targeted to health clubs, the Exertris Interactive
Exercise Bike incorporates a rugged, high-end exercise bike with a
high-performance gaming system based on Windows XP Embedded. The device,
which is located at the base of the bike, includes 256 MB of RAM; an AMD
Duron 800-MHz CPU; a 1024 × 768 LCD color display; an NVIDIA nForce 420
motherboard with AGP graphics, sound, and Ethernet; and a 20-GB IDE hard
disk. In addition, the bike includes a Microsoft SideWinder® USB Game
Pad mounted near the leaning post. Proprietary interface electronics
link the gaming computer to the bike's computer.

For more information on the Electronic Interactive Exercise Industry, join the i-xercise  group I started a couple of years ago.