A life with windows
Published: 25 Nov 2005 09:05 GMT
My first encounter with Windows some 18 years ago was not promising. Working as a freelance IT journalist, I had from time to time been contacted by earnest young public relations executives working for a PR company called Text 100, who wanted to tell me about this great new software.
I knew Text and Microsoft well enough because Microsoft's operating system, MS-DOS, had over a short period of time become the best-selling microcomputer operating system in existence, thanks to a lucrative and very canny contract Microsoft had signed with IBM, the world's largest computer company. IBM paid for the software, and Microsoft got the right to sell it to IBM's competition.
The execs at Text tried to get me interested in this wonderful new operating system called Windows. It would change the world, they told me. They were right of course, but like most of the world I didn't quite see that at the time.
No matter what the success of the IBM PC and Microsoft, it wasn't very interesting as a company. MSDOS was a straight rip-off of CP/M, an older operating system from Digital Research. Windows was a very poor rip-off of Apple's operating system for the then-new Apple Mac. As members of the press, we all knew the Mac and Apple. We liked them. We didn't like rip offs.
Bill Gates further soured our view, not that any further souring was needed. In those days, Bill Gates did not talk to the press — he talked at them. Like his PR company, Bill Gates told us that his company was going to change the world. He told us that we did not know a damn thing about technology. He told us that he knew exactly what the future of the technology world would be — more or less. For some reason, people didn't appreciate being talked to like that, nor did they appreciate that he just didn't care that they didn't appreciate it.
He wasn't right, but it didn't matter. He might not have known more about technology than we ever could, but he knew enough — and that attitude did the rest. He was going to be hugely successful.
That was in the future. Back then, while it was no more necessary to like Bill Gates than it is today, it would have been worthwhile for me to pay a bit more attention to what he was up to.
What he got up to then changed everything...
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"XP is a dream. Works fine, rarely crashed and has... Geoff P -
A "Life with Windows"? Get a life already. I... Douglas Metcalfe
