(and yes, open invitation to send me any electronics/boards/drives to try if you work for a hardware manufacturer, I'll blog about it - address on our Contact page :-)

Part of being a Microsoft Regional Director is getting early access to information and private releases to play with. They also hand out free stuff occasionally. Yesterday Kimberly and I reach received a Windows 7 Sensor development board kit (and as Kimberly doesn't tinker with electronics, I effectively got two!) - these are the same ones that were being given out at PDC apparently.

The board looks pretty neat:

It has an ambient light sensor, a 3D accelerometer, and two touch-sensitive strips on. If you're interested you can buy these from FreeScale for $50 - see here (I have no affiliation with them at all). There's a slide deck from WinHEC that Gavin Gear presented that explains the new Sensor and Location Platform in Win7 - see here.

I'm looking forward to playing with mine and I'll blog about what I do with it.

PS You can get the latest Windows API Code Pack here.