2003 Bill Gates email reveals frustrations with Windows XP

While Bill Gates' imminent retirement from Microsoft is understandably a cause for some quiet moments of reflection for some, it's also given folks an excuse to dig up some tidbits from Gates' tenure that have somehow gone unnoticed or unheralded in the past few years, one of the juiciest of which comes in the form of a 2003 email that Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligence has thankfully given fresh light. In it, Gates rips into "how Windows Usability has been going backwards" as he details his long, arduous attempts to download Moviemaker and buy the then new Digital Plus pack. While there's far to many gems to include here, a few of Gates' stand-out observations include how "crazy" it is that it took six minutes to install "a bunch of controls" before he was able to install Moviemaker, and his disappointment that he had to reboot his machine even though he reboots it every night. Eventually, after (apparently) getting Moviemaker installed, Gates decided to go digging in the add/remove program options to ensure that it was installed, only to find it missing, which prompted him to declare that, "someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable," adding that, "this program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up." Needless to say, we'd recommend hitting the read link below to check out the full must-read email.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 1st 2008 7:12PM]

He is/was the ultimate decision maker at MS and should have kept on-top of all operatons. The MS site has been bloated for a long time. This (alleged) email was sent in 2003. 5 years later and no change. MS could do a LOT more to keep up with customer satisfaction. One of those major factors is their wish to try and force Vista down our throats and forcing it by stopping XP support. Listen-up MS, we prefer XP. That is what the majority of customers want. And, on the whole, customers pay MONEY. Simple equation really.