Bill Gates in transition
With Bill Gates just days away from his semi-retirement from Microsoft, look for a tidal wave of reminiscences and glossy magazine spreads.
Yes, we do indeed have our own in the works; more on that in a sec. But one of the first to arrive is Fortune magazine's package, "Microsoft Without Gates," published online Friday.
Even after he steps down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft, Bill Gates still plans to do some heavy lifting--for the company, for the Gates Foundation, and in his own personal pursuits.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com)Fortune, known for its rankings of the rich and the companies they've built up, lauds the 52-year-old who former Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold describes as "one of the greatest business minds of all time" and lays out how "Bill Gates 2.0" will divide his time among three offices, at Microsoft, at the Gates Foundation, and at a personal workspace.
It also tells how as a teen he got his hands on a used Teletype machine to hone his mainframe programming skills.
One unfinished-business tidbit is worth noting in light of Microsoft's failure to acquire all or a portion of Yahoo.
The one concrete commitment Gates has made to (CEO Steve) Ballmer, other than continuing to chair board meetings, is that he will keep working with the search and advertising team. He's promised he'll spend two and a half hours on it each week.
Fortune also talks about how the company plans to revive a reputation that's been singed by a number of factors, not least of them Apple's ongoing Mac vs. Vista ad campaign, as it heads toward the Windows 7 era.
The new marketing campaign, which is supposed to run for three years beginning later this year, is an urgent attempt at triage for both Windows and the larger Microsoft brand. The expensive, aggressive, long-overdue rejoinder to Apple will be unprecedented at the company in its scope...
...In the next 18 months Microsoft will launch three separate "Windows" products, more or less in tandem. Aside from the flagship Windows 7, which will succeed Vista for PCs, the company will launch a new version of Windows Mobile as well as a new version of the services known as Windows Live. For the first time, they're going to be promoted as aspects of the same thing.
As noted, CNET News.com next week will have its own package looking at Bill Gates' accomplishments, and at what lies ahead both for the man and for Microsoft. As I write this, News.com's Ina Fried is in Redmond after some face time with the Microsoft chairman, and she promises she'll have some good stories to share.
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. 
OK, so the definition of a great business mind is to lie, steal, and copy.
Well I suppose he got away with a lot of things. But that doesn't earn my respect nor the respect of many other people.
That being said, if the next Windows mobile continues to improve upon the most recent version, I'll be quite happy. Hopefully mobile IE continues to improve, preferably at a more rapid pace.
Regardless, good luck to Microsoft, they'll need it.
-limefan913
A Linux, Google, Verizon Crap Firmware user
It sounds like you beat us there.
- by craig.knapp1 June 23, 2008 3:03 PM PDT
- Why I hate Microsoft and Bill Gates.....
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(21 Comments)I have been a computer user since the commodore 64 and IBM x286 days.
Why, in 2008, does windoze not yet offer a "dual payne" viewer such as 2xExplorer does now, or Central Point V7.0 for DOS did nearly 10 years ago (especially in this day and age when everyone is moving data from one peripheral device such as USB drives, camera memory cards, etc. to their hard drives)?
Why does ms ofice (sorry but spell check missed it), still not automatically follow the paragraph and sub-paragraph numbering conventions initiated by the typist intuitively, as did Word Perfect for DOS 7.0 did almost 10 years ago?
If a user browses to their hard drive and 80 percent of the time goes to C:\data why does not windoze monitor this activity and ask the user if this should be the "default" directory when opening the browser? Yes I can edit the registry and force windoze into submission, but should it be this tedious in 2008?
As long as ms is the prime distributor of software (notice I did not say the prime developer) we do not have to worry about computers taking over in a "Terminator" like world, because AI isn not in the vocabulary of ms. My PC is just as stupid as my old IBM Selectric Typewriter was in 1979, despite the PC being nearly 20 years old.
Good riddance to Bill.
Craig Knapp