In the video you’ll meet Ayla, a working mother on a business trip to Johannesburg; Ayla’s daughter, Shannon, who needs help making something for a school bake sale; and a guy named Qin who — well, I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing, but he starts out waiting for a subway train.

These concept videos are always entertaining in the way they show us some slice of life from a routine day in some mildly utopian and antiseptic world of the future, one in which people don’t get stressed by business travel and don’t have hassles at the hotel check-in desks — and where hotel broadband networks actually work. There are lots of portable handheld screens, kind of iPad-like, really, on which people swipe and flick and make other interface gestures that we all intuitively understand now, thanks to — well, the iPad. Which is probably not the comparison that Microsoft is going for here. Ahem.

Also, in the future there are apparently smart windows in taxicabs, and these windows deliver some informative augmented reality, saying things like, “your meeting tomorrow is in this building.” How does the taxi know Ayla’s schedule? From her phone — which looks like a notecard.

Anyway, out of all the things that this video shows, the one thing I want is the eyeglasses that translate languages I don’t speak. Very “Star Trek.”

But when Ayla, the supermom of the future, finally goes to her meeting, it seems more like a meeting that’s held virtually than in person. If that’s the case, why did she even need to fly to Johannesburg in the first place — and why did she have to put on those incredibly cool but dorky-looking glasses? She could have done it all from her home in Redmond. Bonus: She’d have been home to help poor little Shannon with her bake sale in person. Siri, what is the cure for Mommy Guilt?

My weird observations aside, the video is interesting viewing. Hat tip to Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type blog, where I discovered it. Enjoy:

This afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) officially announced “Equipt,” a new package of low-end productivity software and hosted services. Essentially a subscription version of Microsoft Office, Equipt includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, as well as Office Live Workspace, Windows Live OneCare and an assortment of Windows Live tools. The price? $69.99 per year.

But you have to make a trip to Circuit City, which will begin offering Equipt exclusively on July 5 (great choice of partners, guys).

A trip to the local big-box retailer? Interesting way to transition software users from a purchase-to-own model to a subscription-based one. Then again, $200+ worth of software for $70 is a pretty compelling proposition. Assuming you’re not already using OpenOffice and NeoOffice, which are, you know, FREE.

This afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) officially announced “Equipt,” a new package of low-end productivity software and hosted services. Essentially a subscription version of Microsoft Office, Equipt includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, as well as Office Live Workspace, Windows Live OneCare and an assortment of Windows Live tools. The price? $69.99 per year.

But you have to make a trip to Circuit City, which will begin offering Equipt exclusively on July 5 (great choice of partners, guys).

A trip to the local big-box retailer? Interesting way to transition software users from a purchase-to-own model to a subscription-based one. Then again, $200+ worth of software for $70 is a pretty compelling proposition. Assuming you’re not already using OpenOffice and NeoOffice, which are, you know, FREE.