Smart, opportunistic, nerdy? BBC's Money Programme profiled him the other day and it's good viewing. I'd be interested to hear what you think of him and his Evil Empire.


Video not working? Click here

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I bet that is the first pretty lady who has ever taken an interest in him...

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She likes his dongle

*gets coat

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Anyone here not using ANY Microsoft products on their PC ?

At least he's planning to give it all away again - there's nae pockets in a shroud !

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Why is his empire evil? What does he do that is different to other corporations.


Although I do believe Microsoft should be split into divisions not only to maximise product performance but it will make life a lot easier for Microsoft as each division can make its own decisions.

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Tell that to the pharoahs...


and with his kind of money he could have a shroud specially made with pockets.

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Yeah, they need business advice 'cos of their underperformance in the market place...

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*raises hand

well, my home pc anyway

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Nothing, a turn of phrase. I hear that Steve Jobs' empire is more evil

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Essay time again, apologies...

People love to hate Gates and Microsoft, but they ignore the pattern of the computer industry - the two big companies taking the no.1 and 2 positions (and it's not always the Pioneer that's no.1), which is a pattern that doesn't break for decades. Even if a marketplace is crowded, it normally boils down to two companies through takeovers or shakeouts. - We've got Nvidia and ATi for graphics cards, Microsoft itself and Logitech for keyboards and mice, Yahoo and Google for Searching with MS competing sporadically and in the software world, Microsoft and Apple for Operating Systems. Linux is there for the people who want to keep it 1980s and I can't criticise it as it's helped the Open Source movement give us some great programs for free. The fact is, consumers can't be arsed rebuilding their OS or a small part of it every five minutes anymore, they want their computers to work so they can work.

I tried OS/2 from IBM in the 1990s, despite being graphical before Windows 95 arrived it was terrible, that's why I never bothered with it. I also tried PC-DOS, also from IBM, as it was on my first PC in 1993, and the minute the commands started to diverge, I dumped it and installed MS-DOS and can still remember some of those commands when needed today - the language was easier to pick up. It might have taken until 1999 for Windows to start to just work, but that's it, I use it, and two years later XP arrived and the rest was history.

I was always more likely to buy Office than Windows when I had a job, now that any version of Office going back 8 years will do a lot of the same things, I always have an original OS disc, I never pirate that because it's a false economy.

Since they were late to the internet, it was Microsoft that maximised your free email account's limited space by deleting junk every single day, when Yahoo would let it build up for weeks and its filters would forget your settings once a month; it's Windows Media Player where you can click a button and make sure it doesn't override your playback preferences, and its browser plugin actually works for BBC Radio 1 unlike Realplayer's hardly ever working at all.

They have muddied the waters with 64-Bit versions of both XP and Vista which are ahead of their time, but Vista 64's the handover programme before any future version comes along. The software people might use every day would need to be rewritten before they'd consider another switch so soon, so it's the right time for Gates to go, because all the people working at MS need to have an input, otherwise the company will just die off. The old joke about MS losing business if its products work isn't wide of the mark.

So hopefully Europe will leave MS alone now they've had their fine. The companies screaming about anti-competitiveness should have made products that worked for what I wanted them to do, instead of bloating them out with bells and whistles - then I would have kept buying them. Just look at RealOnePlayer from six years ago compared to Realplayer 10.5, everybody's at it. Again, Media Player 11 could do a million things, all I want is the playback and the CDDB artwork - I prefer drilling right down to a few functions. It's quite ironic that people complain about MS planning not to release a new version of their consumer Money software - they're getting out of that market and people are still moaning, people need to make their minds up.

Also, with MS you pay the once for your software, you activate it, you don't copy the disc and that's it for 5-7 years. Apple charges for every release, giving its service packs fancy names. Each to their own but I'm not that rich.

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