Bye Bye Bill Gates!
Posted on June 29th, 2008 by John Cow under Ramblings, The Net, microsoftWant to Learn How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog.. for FREE? CLICK HERE Now to Find Out How!
We’re sure by now that pretty much all of you know that Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft. That’s right, the man who is worth around $60 billion dollars has “officially” stepped down from Microsoft as of June 27th 2008 so that he can spend more of his time dedicated to philanthropy…. which is pretty cool considering all his money we are sure he can help a lot of people.
We figured here at the JC pastures we should take a look at some of the good things that have come out of Microsoft and some of the bad.
One of the biggest and newest things that have come out of Microsoft lately, is obviously, Vista. Many users have been extremely disappointed from it. Whether it was due to Vista being such a resource hog, or to have it crash or to upgrade only to find out that your business software isn’t compatible…
Well let’s just say that it was a huge disappointment.
Personally we have it on a few computers and for the majority of tasks we are ok with it. Huge pains when trying to get drivers for certain things but that has improved as of late. We are truly MAC fans but we run Windows Vista on our main laptop and also on our virtial pc within our iMAC…. which is very handy.
Last year the Vista kind of reminded us of Microsoft ME, another operating system that maybe could have been good if it wasn’t rushed, actually who are we kidding… it was a huge cow pattie!
You know what else we want to put on the ‘bad’ list…Internet Explorer. Now wait before you come out to the pasture at night and do some cow tipping, hear us out first. Years ago we were HUGE fans of IE… basically because we didn’t know better, just joking. No for real, we remember using Netscape back in the day and then finding out about IE. We used IE for years and loved it, however then we found out about Firefox we loved that more. Then, IE7 came out and what initially sounded good turned right into a cow pattie. Just like Microsoft’s new OS, it had a hard time doing anything and crashed all of the time.
OK so VIsta… IE7, oh ya now let’s take a look at Office 2007.
We first opened Word when we got this application, and after a half an hour of searching for little known things that we loved about Office 2003, like ‘File’ we gave up and got rid of the stupid application and went back to Office 2003. Another annoying feature with Office 2007 was the fact that if somebody was using an older version like 2003 and somebody was using a newer version like 2007, well guess what…
They were NOT compatible!
We had to go in and manually change the format of the file so that the new one could open 2003 version…
Where’s the backwards compatibility that was promised?
OK, now let’s take a look at some of Microsoft’s good features.
Well of course, being a little into gaming, first thing right off the bat is the Xbox and Xbox 360. Sure both had some issues when they were first released, especially the 360 with the red rings of death but overall the console is great. Microsoft knows it’s their fault that the system overheats and has taken it into their hands and spent $1 billion to extend warranty’s from 1 year to 3 years to replace the console when it’s sent in to be serviced.
Of course to go along with the gaming aspect of Microsoft, there’s Halo. A great science fiction first person shooter which has set many different records in the gaming industry from sales and is for sure one of the largest games in gaming history and it was also one reason why the Xbox is as big as it is today.
Oh and also we like the fact that the Windows Vista music FINALLY CHANGED! (hmmm think somebody was annoyed with the XP Music?)
We do use Microsoft Office 2003 for a lot of stuff and we have tried Open Office but find that we pretty much do not want anything but Excel and PowerPoint… nothing so far has worked in place of these two. Now Word is good too but we hate that they always put the extra formatting crap in there when you try to copy and paste into a blog post or anything like that. They really need to create an option for a clean copy and paste feature.
Actually, even though we like to crap on Microsoft a little, we do use a heck a lot of their products and we can’t deny the fact that Mr. Gates has paved the way for a lot of new things that are happening. He obviously has done a lot of things right and because of their market position it is such an obvious target for getting some heat thrown at them (Yes they have deserved a lot of it but not all of it).
Now don’t think Billy is going to run away and out of the public eye… that’s not the case as he plans to spend more time to philanthropy (Philanthropy is an act over an extended period of time of donating money, time, effort and goods to help support charitable causes) and we are pretty sure we will be seeing his face in the news a lot.
Thank you Mr. Gates for some of your hits and some of your misses. Have fun and have a nice glass of cold milk, on us.
What farewell message do you have about Bill and Microsoft (cant wait to read some linux and mac lovers responses)?
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Bill gates spent some millions of bucks for helping poor/poverty stricken Indians last year,he also donated loads of money for various organisations
He is supercool 
I want him to donate more instead of wasting that green money 
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hey Bill is leaving Na
Why you wrote about windows so much,?
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You’re right Cow, The Office 2007, IE and some others Microsoft widgets are anoying.
But, Bill Gate has help a lot to enhance the usability of a lot of things through Microsoft corporation.
Wish I’ll come to give some money here in Congo (RDC, central africa) after the civil war wich as killed 5,4 millions persons.
Have Fun Bill ! See you next times on the news paper.
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Hey mr gates, How about donating some money to me instead..
This is highly irrelevant information.
Bill Gates already turned over the CEO job to Steve Ballmer a while back, he’s been just a figurehead of the company for quite some time. I understand you are using this as an excuse to rant about how cool your Mac computer is, there is just way too much of this mac v. pc garbage floating around as is.
Mind you, Bill Gates is still the chairman of the board
Check out this comedy video he and microsoft made… it’s pretty funny for msft: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080212/bill-gates-last-day-microsoft-take-two/
wow…huge MS bash post here.
Not really something I expected but I do have some comments. There’s a lot of MS hating going on here. I have office 2k7 on both my home machine and my work laptop and have no problems with either. Also, backward compatibility means that if you have a newer version of an application, you can still open older versions, not the other way around. That would be “forward compatibility” which doesn’t exist.
If you have a user/friend/co-worker that has office 2k3 and you save a file from 2k7 that has extra features of course they aren’t going to be able to read it…that goes for any software, not just Microsoft Software…be fair.
As for the mac. Explain to me why iTunes stops working on my wife’s imac nearly every day for no reason? About twice a day she has to shut down the drive her files are on and restart iTunes. I’ve never had anything like that happen on my PC and I use iTunes all the time.
My game system is a PC and I’m running Windows Vista Ultimate. Haven’t had any driver problems, rarely does the computer crash, and it starts up in about 30 seconds compared to a good 15 minutes on my laptop and at least 10 minutes for my other work computer.
So, what all that says to me is, it really depends on the computer you are running all this on and how much memory/hdd space/video card you are using. There’s no perfect system on the planet and never will be. We just use the best software and hardware for the job that we can afford. Heck, I’d love it if I could do my job with only the drum kit from Rock Band but it ain’t gonna happen.
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The one thing that’s interesting to me is that Bill Gates made all this money selling Microsoft software, and now he plans to spend his time giving away that same money to charities…?
I’m not anti-Microsoft products, but the only way that could make sense is if he claims that the way HE spends philanthropy money is more effective than just you or I taking the $99 or whatever for our copies of Windows and donating it ourselves. When you consider the cutthroat practices of Microsoft, like the Mike Rowe Soft ordeal where they strong-armed a 17-year-old kid out of his domain, the formula kind of looks like this: Microsoft puts businesses, small and large, into bankruptcy and extracts money from anyone by any means within the law so that Bill Gates can donate this money to other causes he deems more deserving. I understand that defeating your competition is just part of the business circle of life, but when you think about it this way, businesses that make donations don’t seem so gallant for just displacing their competition’s money.
Besides, let’s be realistic: Microsoft is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, yet the products they produce aren’t even really superior — they do worry about and compete with open source operating systems and browsers. Firefox didn’t have a multi-billion dollar budget and yet it’s on par with IE. Vista doesn’t even work right! And I think I must be tired for going on like this, but yeah, something about this picture doesn’t add up.
You say this as if it were comparable. You could as well compare cows with chickens. I lack to see any evil in a man who made his fortune with a business venture and who is into donating for charity (and that for quite some time now, by the way).
What Gates chooses to do with the money he earned with the company he founded (which you connect too tightly to him as a person) is his decision alone and doesn’t give you the right to pick on Microsoft, a company which consists of more than just its figurehead.
Capitalism doesn’t work this way - that you can choose to donate the product price to charity instead of paying the company. If you provide a service, you deserve payment, right? Don’t look at evil, evil Microsoft but at yourself for a change. I won’t explain the basics of economics here but you should know what you’re talking about.
I don’t agree with some of Microsoft’s business practices just like you, but remember that Gates isn’t the devil, just a business person who started a company which now consists of more than him alone. A very large company, too, which is in the software field, where the 100% bug-free product simply doesn’t exist. It’s the nature of software.
As for their business practices, yes some can be looked at as unethical but when you are in their position, everything you do is being perceived in a different light. The matter with the 17-yr old is not the most humane thing either but if you have a brand value, you have to protect it, that again is basic economics.
And while you’re at it, you should also throw eggs at the courts who always rule in favor of companies when it comes to corporate vs. individual domain name registrars.
As much as people like to slander and attack him Bill Gates has done more for the world of computers than any other individual. If it wasn’t for his cut throat way of doing business I highly doubt anyone would have been so motivated as they were to advance technology in the public sector.
I also suspect that many people simply hate him because that’s the cool thing to do. It just makes us feel more manly when we can hate on someone without a real reason. It’s mob mentality at it’s best.
As far as the products his company put out… What can be said, no what needs to be said? Love it or hate it the fact is that NEARLY everyone uses it. That’s a mark of true business genius. He forced everyone’s hand and he did it so effectively that after nearly 20 years of bitching about it no one has figured out a way to get out from under the Microsoft influence. Hell, entire conglomerates of nations have tried to beat him and his (former) company back (EU) and have made no noticeable headway.
Bottom line love him or hate him he did something very right.
For all the criticism he gets he’ll never be forgotten … he’s got and will always have more money than everyone reading the entire MMOL niche.
People need to appreciate each OS for what it is, what it does and the market share each of them has …. Too many mac fan boys soaping each others c*cks in the shower for my liking.
I’m old enough to remember the days pre-Microsoft dominance. And for the IT industry as a whole Microsoft were a godsend. We got the dominant platform and standards we wanted so that instead of worrying about what platform to write software for, we could just write software. Ditto for what machine to buy.
Was it the best OS/standards? No. But it was good and dominant enough to put a PC in every home and desk and give us all phenomonal business opportunities today. Cheers Bill!
On an interesting aside, I read a biography of Steve Jobs and it detailed how he literally threw away (by tossing a proposed contract into the bin during a meeting, saying it was too long) the opportunity to license the OS for IBM-PCs himself. I’m a big fan of Steve Jobs but he runs a closed shop and I get the feeling we’d be worse off (but with better software?) had he taken that trillion dollar opportunity.
I guess he’ll just have to make do with the billions he has along with being a key player in the IT, Music and Move industries
bill gates is one of the awesome guys who really made some major changes in the world, both through his microsoft and now his faundation channel..
He is one good guy, and he deserves the break now
hail the geek!
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Bill Gate has help a lot to enhance the usability of a lot of things through Microsoft corporation.
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Absolutely he has!
I forgot to mention, any newer version of software isn’t going to be compatible with the older version…and the “file” menu is under the new little icon…yeah it’s not totally obvious but it is there. I much prefer Outlook 2007 over the previous version. One more thing, you can’t have office 2003 and 2007 installed on the same machine or you will get all kinds of errors and crashes, but you shouldn’t have both anyway.
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My last reply was in response to James Wilcox; my quotes didn’t work. Sorry about that. Here are the two paragraphs I was trying to quote:
“Not really something I expected but I do have some comments. There’s a lot of MS hating going on here. I have office 2k7 on both my home machine and my work laptop and have no problems with either. Also, backward compatibility means that if you have a newer version of an application, you can still open older versions, not the other way around. That would be “forward compatibility” which doesn’t exist.”
“As for the mac. Explain to me why iTunes stops working on my wife’s imac nearly every day for no reason? About twice a day she has to shut down the drive her files are on and restart iTunes. I’ve never had anything like that happen on my PC and I use iTunes all the time.”
I did splurge on that machine. It cost me $1500.00 when I bought it a couple years ago. It’s running OS 10, has plenty of RAM it’s just that iTunes doesn’t like the drive all her music is stored on so it crashes alot.
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Nice post, John. I’m also a Mac user, and I agree with you on Microsoft overall.
I wanted to tell you that I run Microsoft Office 2008 on my Mac (not on Parallels), and it’s pretty sweet once you get used to it. Also, Pages & Numbers (iWork ‘08) are really cool for general word processing, PDF/ebook creation & fun, graphical spreadsheet work.
Take care,
Kyle
Hmm, I wonder what is to become of Microsoft! I think the xbox is their best thing. Well, my personal favorite. Besides the overheating problems, and overly sensitive disk reading- xbox 360 > PS3
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I got several point to this post, cow. Everybody has pros and cons output in their life. BG was make a lot of contribute in this world. I appreciate with his way out for completing in perfection. Microsoft may fall and disappear but BG with his story will stay in the history. CMIIW.
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I suppose Bill Gates had to step down some time, have a nice retirement.
Is “Mr. Green” with envy in the room?
If anyone could have done it better than Bill Gates, I suppose that person would be getting slammed here instead.
Congratulations to Bill Gates for his accomplishments which have way surpassed his failures. He is a multibillionaire today because of the “value” microsoft has provided to us all.
Who needs all this stuff anyway? KIDDING!
Not to knock MS down too much, but you’d figure that they’d have all the bugs out of everything worked out by now, no? Just create an end-all-be-all OS & jst
If I had the coin, I’d buy a Mac, but still keep my MS WIN PC, too. So, Mr. Gates, what about a donation- ha!