Gates Helped Usher in the Computer Revolution

Dear Propeller Heads: I just read that Bill Gates is finally leaving Microsoft. I know that you are not fans of Gates, so how do you view his departure? A: You must be referring to our habit of poking fun at Gates and Microsoft.

It’s true that we love a good techie joke as much as the next geek, but Bill Gates’ departure is a good time to reflect on all the good things Microsoft has done, aside from making Bill a zillionaire.

In late June, Stan Gibson wrote an article in eWeek entitled “End of an Era” about Gates’ retirement from the company he founded in 1975.

Gibson makes the point that Gates embodied a rare combination of business savvy and a passion for technology that uniquely qualified him to help usher in the computer revolution of the 1980s and ’90s.

While it is true that Gates’ business practices could often be fairly described as ruthless and predatory, they enabled Microsoft to become a dominant force in computing, and this brought some benefits to consumers.

So, how did Gates’ success benefit you?

Well, for one thing, it furnished comedians with an endless supply of jokes, and everyone needs a little humor in their lives, don’t they? You can find hundreds of these by Googling “Bill Gates jokes.”

But seriously, one of the reasons that computers became a ubiquitous home commodity is because of Microsoft Windows and the personal computer clone.

While Microsoft’s most serious rival, Apple, refused to allow clones of its machines, the IBM PC was being reproduced by dozens of smaller companies.

The flood of computers inevitably drove down the price, which made them more attractive to consumers. And nearly every PC clone was running a Microsoft operating system of MS DOS and then Windows.

Apple fans grouse that their company produces superior hardware and software, and there is some truth in that.

However, Gates grasped a very important fact about computing economics: it’s more important for software to be cheap and good enough than to be pricey and perfect.

And we all know that Microsoft software is nowhere near perfect.

Gibson points to software bundling as an example of Gates’ marketing savvy.

Microsoft Office quickly became the standard business software suite because of convenience and cost.

The bundle included most standard business software, and the software worked well on Windows (no surprise there). In addition, all of the bundled applications shared a standard interface with similar menus.

When you learned one, you learned them all.

This is not to imply that all Microsoft products were successful, or even well designed.

Remember Windows ME? But it’s easy to forget the successes, such as Windows 2000, and Office 97.

For a full list of the Top 10 best and worst Microsoft products, according to eWeek labs, visit tinyurl.com/6yqkd8. For the entire eWeek article about the Gates era at Microsoft, see tinyurl.com/ 5ebsqm.

But enough of this praise of Gates. We’re making ourselves a little sick.

– Send your questions on business or consumer technology to questions@askthepropellerheads.com. Or, contact the Propeller Heads at Data Directions, 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116 or at (804) 427-2426.biz LOOKUP Gates helped usher in

the computer revolution

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