http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 9:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/I don't think anybody will have the same impact that he has had on technology in my lifetime.]]>Jan 7th 2008 7:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
you've paved the way for a very bright future in technology.

And i'd just like to say thanks for that.

Cheers Bill.]]>Jan 7th 2008 10:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 12:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
C:/YOU/LATER/GoodRetirement.BAT]]>Jan 7th 2008 7:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 10:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 10:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 10:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
Granted, it is taking 2 guys to fill Bill's shoes, but they are two highly competent guys. MS isn't in any danger.]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 7:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/]]>Jan 7th 2008 7:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
I hope Steve doesn't take over, that guy's a jerk]]>Jan 7th 2008 7:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Just wait till MacWorld next Tuesday =]]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 10:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
I think Vista is a great product, but there are issues that I think are too big for a mainstream OS....1 such issue is the fact that they released 32 and 64 bit. Vista should have been primarily 64bit with only Basic coming in 32 bit flavors for lower end PCs (and funny enough even machines that basic run on have 32/64bit processors). It's not unreasonable to foresee most users on 32/64bit processors at the point that Vista was released, so why 32 bit?

Products like the Windows Live Experience and MS own' branded hardware like the Fingerprint Reader don't come in 64 bit flavors but 32 bit, yet 32 bit Vista has obvious limitations (and mind you, it's not a Vista but moreso 32 bit technology limitation) such as not being able to use more than 4gb of memory. I believe that had Vista been primarily 64 bit, hardware and software devs would have been nudged to do their R&D and release 64 bit drivers and software now. Unfortunately because of the choice of both, the majority (including MS, ironically) are 'lazy' to push 64 bit drivers/software which in the end hurts both sets of users, because those who want to go 64 are waiting in the wings for more hardware with driver support and software built for it, and those with 32 bit are not experiencing the full experience that a machine of today can offer.
]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
They would have also forced the vast majority of their consumer customers to buy new machines rather than upgrade (and those new machines better not be running Via processors or low power intel processors) AND had a headache when everyone went to install their old kernel mode software (A/V software and the such) to find that it was incompatible with patchguard. When Vista was released 90% of the world wasn't ready for 64bit, and frankly doesn't need it. 4 gigs of ram isn't needed by the average consumer (crap, I have an instance of photoshop, three copies of visual studio 2008, IE, acrobat, and outlook open right now and I am not paging noticably with my 3 gigs of ram).

I think you, like many of the tech enthusiasts, want 64bit for the sake of having it.

> "Products like the Windows Live Experience and MS own' branded hardware like the Fingerprint Reader don't come in 64 bit flavors"

Er, what? I guess some of the hardware might not have 64 bit DRIVERS, but there isn't such a thing as 64 bit flavored hardware. ]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
As far as understanding the market, perhaps I don't...but what I see currently is Vista not particularly being adopted as widely as it should be, and many customers complaining about non-issues. If Windows is as powerful as you yourself mention, then they should be able to drive the market with their software. It's possible but I highly doubt that there are corporations out there running workstations on a 32bit only processor and running Vista Business. Vista should have been used as a turning point for 64bit computing. Not only would this benefit 'enthusiasts' as you put it, but business applications would be able to take advantage of the technology to be able to access more memory and run faster, not to mention the added pad of security that exists when you're running 64bit code.

Change is good, believe me. 5 years ago noone needed 2gb of Ram or 500gb of hard drive space, 10 years ago noone needed 1gb of Ram and 100gb of hard drive space.
Currently, noone needs Quad Core 64bit CPUs or 4gb of Ram. But things can only evolve once we start using it.

This was a prime moment for MS to exact some form of change from 32 to 64bit in the consumer and business market. Convince companies to upgrade? Hardly. The majority of companies out there have IT people that understand that you do what you need to do to get everything running well, no matter what. Sure you're not going to run out and buy 50 quad core extremes for workstations, but slapping a new board and 64 bit processors will ensure compatibility of your enterprise system for a few years down the road, and so is worth it. Moreso than hanging on to those AthlonXP 2000 chips and 512mb of ram that you get complaints about at least 3 times a week.


Now, what we have are consumers crying to 'upgrade' their old machines and blaming MS for incompat. issues or Vista being slow as so and so on their 'almost new 3 year old machines'. We have companies selling customers machines with Vista 32 with 32/64bit chips and 4gb of Ram (which as I mentioned, can't be used in 32bit Vista). It's a waste.

I look at it like a computer and operating system in itself. We all know there's a time when upgrading is fine...but there's also that time when starting over (formatting) works out best, and I just believe that Vista would have been a great start-over point for us currently. The world is never 'ready' for any technology. But we evolve.]]>Jan 10th 2008 1:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 12:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 1:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/I have always looked up to Bill Gates ever since I read about him as a child.
His amazing work at Microsoft has enriched our computer experience.
Though Windows is not perfect, it does its job pretty well. It is productive.
I hope he will continue to work as a visionary at Microsoft, because PCs would not have been the same without Bill Gates.
Goodbye, Bill. We'll always have you in our hearts.]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/gates is not a good person, sure he may have been intelligent but giving loads of money towards planed parenting and abortion are huge no no's bill gates is an evil man as are a lot of very wealthy people.

microsoft is a stack of manure that can't be piled much higher.

Now all you m$ fanboys rate my comment down!! I dare you!

Open-Source all the way!]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
As for Bill thanks for helping unify an industry that without one dominate OS would have struggled to bring things like the web to the mainstream. Please now try and unify the world to stop bickering about minor things and start solving major ones!]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 10:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/2. abadtooth is a damned moron.]]>Jan 7th 2008 9:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
You can't call him a bad person for that since about half the US population agrees with him and most of the rest of the world. That's an ethical choice that really splits the population, some agree, some don't. Even though I support it I don't think of you as a bad person for not supporting it. I just think that you're misguided by religion or a lack of science.

So don't bad mouth someone who is donating a ridiculous amount of time and money to help cure diseases that kill millions more than abortions.

P.S. and try not to sound like a dumbass by using vocabulary that's a bit above the 2nd grade level. (wtf is a no-no).]]>Jan 7th 2008 10:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
He lead a company whose policies involved stamping out competition at every corner. I'm sure as the Owner/CEO of Microsoft he had his hands in every tricky legal document signed over the years. I just can't begin to understand why, except to squeeze every penny they could out of the economy...

But sure, so he takes the billions of dollars swindled from the worldwide community and funnels it into some charity and all is forgiven? Hell, I have some land in Florida I'd like to sell you.]]>Jan 7th 2008 11:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/You made my day Andir3.0, thanks!

I'm not a religious fanatic, but I do have a small set of morals.
Sure millions die from diseases but is that any one mans fault?
Thats the product of countless centuries of corruption.

Answer me this, say Your in a town where there is only one phone company providing internet, what do You think the chances are that the service is going to be either crappy or very expensive?
I think it's safe to say most all of the time it will be both!

Microsoft did not work wonders or even do much of anything for the "greater good"(if you will) of the computer industry.
Stomping out competition does not encourage anything that would benefit the end-user (Yourself), say as much effort and money was put into open-source Unix rather than a proprietary operating systems like Dos/windows, how much farther would the whole industry be along?
Don't kid yourself, just take a look at some of the latest FREE Linux distributions, or maybe a web browser.
Any way you look at it the proof is everywhere, Open-Source is better for the end-user.

Stephan:
"So I am going to feed you. Since you obviously have abundant courage to anonymously badmouth the greatest philanthropist of our time, I assume you must be either the second coming, or the Antichrist you choose."
I am Me.


Blake Bowen:
"2. abadtooth is a ****** moron."
Aren't we all though, however I don't see how petty name calling is productive...

Commenter:
"DOS and Windows (Both legal and illegal copies) lifted millions of people in developing countries out of poverty. You have no idea.."
Do please enlighten me!
So far I'm seeing examples to open source and charity's like OLPC doing this, not any microsoft involvement there.

]]>Jan 8th 2008 12:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 2:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 8th 2008 8:24AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
I am not fond of all of MS practices, but I understand that some of them are necessary when it comes to 1. making money and 2. protecting yourself as a company.
Personally, I think Mr. Gates is a good man. He's brilliant and his ideas for our future are just amazing. I won't defend all the negative press MS gets - they do what they need to do, but when all is said and done....I salute the MAN (not necessarily the company) for being who he is and can only hope that the company continues to follow the path that he has set and strives for the visions that he puts forward.

You can bad mouth MS all you want, but take it easy on Bill.]]>Jan 10th 2008 2:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
I really look forward to seeing what kind of good he will work towards building in the world a man with his kind of capabilities will bring.

So long Bill!]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/This isn't the last time we'll hear from Bill Gates, that's for sure.]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
Bill (and his company) had the biggest impact on my life in technology so far and I don't think that there will be another outstanding personality in the near future, who will be able to get close to him.

Good luck, Bill!]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/
So with his love of the "natural user interface" does that mean he will still have his hands in Surface and try to push that more mainstream?

Surface FTW.

]]>Jan 7th 2008 8:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bill-gates-the-exit-interview/Jan 7th 2008 8:34PM