I was reminded of this while browsing through Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink and generally considered to be a very clever bloke) as part of my research, such that it was, for next month’s Prolog – that is, the editor’s column in PC Pro.

I actually read Outliers a few months ago and was scanning through the pages looking for the reference to why education in the summer holidays is pivotal to the development of children – we’re working on a huge “Give your kids the IT edge” feature, published mid-July – when my attention was caught by the name Bill Gates.

As you can probably tell, Outliers is a wide-ranging book, and one of Gladwell’s key arguments is that raw ability and hard work aren’t enough. You need to be born at the right time and then have the right opportunity.

So let’s consider the pimply* youth that was Bill Gates. When he was growing up, he was fortunate that a school group raised enough money to buy a time-sharing terminal so the children could access a local university’s mainframe computer – an incredible advantage for the geeky Gates. And bear in mind this is 1968.

Throughout the rest of his childhood he was gripped, and took every opportunity to stretch his programming skills. While hard work and ability played a huge part in his development, he would never have become the programmer he was without spending thousands of hours in front of a computer screen testing and honing his coding ability.

Look into the background of virtually all the big names of the IT industry – Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Scott McNealy, Eric Schmidt – and you’ll almost certainly find the same story. You’ll also find something quite remarkable: all five of these industry gurus were born between 1954 and 1956.

Those dates are crucial. Any older, and upon graduating they’d have been hoovered up by the likes of IBM and trapped into the mainframe way of thinking. Any younger, and Gates et al have got their first.

Of course, hundreds of thousands of other children were born at this time too. What lifted Gates and the rest above all others was a combination of opportunity, hard work and ability. But without luck, and timing, neither he, Jobs, Ballmer, McNealy or Schmidt would have risen to their current dizzy heights.

*I admit that I have no evidence that Bill Gates was a pimply youth. I just like to believe it’s true.

That’s right, Microsoft has rolled out the second television spot in its Vista-marketing blitz, and good news comedy chums, it’s even more surreal than the first one. Again there’s no mention of Vista, but then there simply isn’t time as Bill and Jerry move into an everyday ordinary home to experience the life of normal people. Anybody familiar with the antics of shortlived Nickleoden wonder show Pete & Pete will feel right at home in this latest slice of Microsoft madness, in which cause, effect and logic are rather wonderfully torn asunder.

I blogged unashamedly of liking the first commercial, but this second one is utterly brilliant. There are some truly corking lines within its fractured whole, and I find myself thoroughly engrossed by the antics of television’s latest odd couple. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who I’ve never “got” is acutally making me chuckle, and ten years too late I find I’m no longer a social pariah.

In my earlier post, I argued that the early adverts aren’t so much an attempt to sell Vista as simply reshape the public perception of Microsoft as a company, and nothing in this latest ad convinces me otherwise. Bill Gates continues to play the buffoon to Seinfeld’s straight man, a role he is uniquely suited for due to his decision-making distance from the company but also immediate synonymity with the brand.

I’m also charmed by the bravery of heading in exactly the opposite direction to the one we all expected. It would have been so easy, and so futile, to have engaged in a tit-for-tat campaign against Apple’s incredibly smug, if succesful, Mac vs PC ads. And Microsoft would have lost, badly. I can’t help but feel that just a couple of years ago it was a trap the company would happily have fallen into, lured on by a lack of imagination and genereal fear of swimming in new water after years of playing it safe in the shallow end.

But something’s changed. Whether that’s Ballmer influence or Bill Gate’s new lease of life since leaving, I don’t know, but as an attempt to change the corporate status quo it’s one of the more remarkable I can remember. And made all the more enticing because it’s grown up. Scripted comedy displaying wit and imagination, rather than Apple’s now trademark brand of playground namecalling. In many ways it’s the best rebutall it could have summoned.

The Microsoft site claims that “very soon, the campaign will turn toward communicating specifically about Windows brand and the products that carry the Windows flag” which is undoubtedly the testing ground for the ads. It’s always awkward watching a celebrity flog something they know nothing about, and I very much doubt Seinfeld’s quiet years have been spent in pursuit of his McSe.

But I truly hope they pull it off. I’m enjoying my ride on the Microsoft train immensely and I really don’t want to see it come off the tracks.

I like my comedy to come from unexpected angles, I appreciate bad jokes told well, and comedians who charge at the truth without fear of what will happen when they hit it – stand up Bill Hicks and Richard Prior. I’m laying all this at your feet, because I’m about to use it as a crash mat.

You see, the Vista advert made me laugh, and more importantly I think it’s a good piece of marketing.

That singular fact puts me in opposition to almost 98.4% of the blogosphere, who feel the same way about the Vista advert I do about genocide and people who talk at the theatre. Whatever their protestations, it’s not the worst advert ever and anybody who believes it is clearly needs a bout of insomnia and a television that only picks up Channel Five. It’s also not a $300m advert, which is the other muddle-headed claim. Microsoft has spent $300m on the campaign, which will cover multiple adverts over a couple of years, banners, posters, events, celebrity appearences, sponsorship and the entire paraphernalia of nonsense that goes along with modern marketing. Whether it’s a waste of money or not is irrelevant. It’s Microsoft’s money, and the company can do with it as it pleases. Nobody tells you how to spend your cash.

The only argument that matters is whether the advert is a success or not, and that has nothing to do with how you feel about it. Some people like it, some people find it cringe worthy, but everybody’s talking about it and that’s always the first goal. No it didn’t mention Vista, but as this is the first in a series, it doesn’t have to.

And besides, I’m not entirely sure that would be too clever anyway. Arguably Vista’s image problem is also a Microsoft problem. People don’t like Microsoft, and so they don’t like Vista. Beating people over the head with an advertisement that says Vista is ace, isn’t going to change that.  They probably haven’t used it anyway. So perhaps, the first step is to change the image of the parent, and then deal with the image of the child. And the most recognisable face of Microsoft is Gates.

The advert, together with the Bill’s Last Day video, are slowly turning Gates into Microsoft’s mascot, a bumbling jester type figure stumbling from one weird situation to another. They’re giving Microsoft a personality beyond the one imposed by its antitrust case and business deals. It’s something they’ve never attempted before and and I think it’s going to work.

This is the first advert, and there’ll be more. And they will talk about Vista. And ten to one, they’ll make me laugh.

To mark his passing, the Seattle Post Intelligencer has dug out what it bills as an “epic rant” to poor Jim Allchin, describing the world of pain the Microsoft boss sufferred when he tried to download and install Windows Moviemaker in 2003.

My favourite lines from the five-page diatribe:

“So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time. What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?”

A question we’ve asked ourselves many a time. And what about this little insight:

“Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.”

Perhaps you should try re-installing Windows, Bill. He goes on:

“So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.”

And the icing on the cake:

“When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.”

I bet Jim couldn’t wait for the second installment to ping into his inbox.

It’s good to see that even the man in charge of Microsoft suffers the same infuriating problems we do. It’s just a shame he didn’t do more about them before jetting off into the sunset.

You can read our Farewell Bill Gates feature here

The first time was in 1999, when a poorly-briefed (and I’m not refering to his infamous pants) Jeremy Paxman interviewed Gates. Paxman lobbed in his trademark terse questions, but lacked the knowledge to disect Gates’s answers with even a hint of the ferociousness he reserves for polticians.

As this Slashdot reviewer said of the Paxman interview: “He challenged Gates on various issues, even mentioning Linus Torvalds, but unfortunately Jeremy isn’t a technology expert, so the topic of open standards and protocols wasn’t raised, and when Gates’ asserted that the field was wide open for anyone to do what he and Microsoft have done, Jeremy didn’t know enough to point out that when someone begins to look like they might challenge Microsoft’s position, they get driven out of business or acquired.”

In the end, a clearly out of his depth Paxman resorted to cheap jibes, challenging Gates on whether he was now so rich that he could earn more money in the time it would take him to pick up a dropped $100 bill. Gates treated the question with disdain it deserved. Gates 1 vs BBC 0.

So, given a second chance, with unprecedented access to Gates, his father and Steve Ballmer among others, who did the BBC send to interview Mr Microsoft for one last time before he bows out? Newsreader Fiona Bruce.

Fawning Fiona predictably wasted half of her questions on Gates’ wealth and early career, before finally asking a couple of “tougher” questions on Microsoft being sued by its own government and Google – questions Gates brushed aside with ease because Fiona’s clearly as familiar with the software business as she is with the contents of my fridge.

Instead, it was left to a roster of US technology writers (note to BBC – we do technology journalism over here, too) and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor to bring in even the merest hint of dissent. So desperate was the BBC to pad this nonsense, that it felt like every single soundbite was repeated at least twice during the hour-long show. It was a phenomenal wasted opportunity.

The BBC claimed it took two years of negotiation to land the interview with Gates. Perhaps Microsoft vetoed the idea of being interviewed by somebody who knows what they’re talking about (technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, for instance). More likely the BBC, with one eye on the ratings, decided once more to sacrifice expertise for a star name like Paxman or Bruce.

Once more, the show suffered as a result.