Gallery

Bill's 10 biggest hits

Posted on 12 May 2008 at 12:50

1. Putting Windows on 90% of PCs

By fair means or foul, getting Windows on nine out of ten of the world's computers is undoubtedly the standout achievement of Gates' 30-year reign. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 changed the face of corporate computing, while Windows 95 revolutionised the home market.

2. Standardised device drivers

Drivers are the lifeblood of an operating system. They provide access to the base hardware under the OS, and supply all the services to applications running on the platform (such as printing). From Windows' earliest days, Gates saw the need for a comprehensive driver model. Unlike early DOS applications such as 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, where each app needed its own driver, Windows allowed the application vendor to write to the Windows platform and let the driver model sort out the specifics just once for the entire platform. The strength of the Windows driver model has been one of the most important underpinnings of Microsoft's success over the last 20 years.

3. The Internet tidal wave

He certainly took his time, but when the importance of the internet finally dawned on Gates he was brave enough to put Microsoft's full weight behind it. "I have gone through several stages of increasing my views of its importance," Gates wrote in his seminal internal memo of May 1995. "Now, I assign the internet the highest level." Before long, Internet Explorer was being bundled with Windows and stamping its (illegal?) dominance on the web.

4. The Bill and Melinda Foundation

Gates might not have amassed his rich-list-topping personal fortune by playing within the rules, but he's hellbent on giving most of it away, so much so that his decision to step down at Microsoft was largely due to the demands of having to spend 5% of the charity's capital every year. No mean feat when the kitty stands at $38 billion, following an injection of funds from Warren Buffett.

5. Visual Basic

Visual Basic "was probably the best programming tool ever made", according to PC Pro's contributing editor David Moss. "It gave everyone the opportunity to become programmers, and along with Borland Pascal was probably responsible for the entire shareware market." Meanwhile, fellow Real Worlder Kevin Partner describes it as "one of the most productive languages I ever used. Not beautiful in its syntax or in some of the monstrosities created with it, but powerful and usable".

6. Winning the contract with IBM for MS-DOS

He may have had more than a little help from his influential mother, who put in a good word with IBM's top brass, but winning the contract to produce the disk operating system for the IBM PC was Gates' big break. Gates somehow persuaded IBM to let Microsoft retain the rights to MS-DOS, allowing him to sell the OS to Big Blue's rivals and spawn the entire IBM-compatible PC market.

7. Microsoft Office

Two products have kept Microsoft shareholders sipping the finest bubbly over the years: Windows and Office. Word has been the leading word processor for the best part of two decades, while products such as Excel and PowerPoint have become the Hoovers of the computing world. Last year's Office 2007 refresh now brings all the features added over the years to the fore.

8. Poaching David Cutler

When PC Pro's Jon Honeyball was thinking who else could be considered a computing "great" after the death of Roger Needham in 2003, he came up with only two potential candidates: Linus Torvalds and David Cutler. Gates lured Cutler away from DEC in 1988 and it was one of the smartest decisions he's ever made. He led the development of Windows NT, and then helped translate NT, Windows 2000 and XP for 64-bit computing. Now a senior technology fellow at Microsoft, the company's hoping he can bring some stardust to the Windows Live platform.