Hard Drive charts Gates's missteps as well as his successes: the failure of OS/2 and the embarrassing delays in bringing Windows to the marketplace; the highly publicized split with IBM, which then forged an alliance with Apple to battle Microsoft; the public relations fallout over various exploits of Gates; and the investigations by the Federal Trade Commission. Wallace and Erickson also examine the combative, often abrasive side of Gates's personality that has alienated many of Microsoft's rivals and even employees, and led to his being labeled "The Silicon Bully" by Business Month Magazine. They report: In the early 80's, Microsoft's Multiplan lost out to Lotus 1-2-3 in the marketplace. According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on DOS 2.0 had a saying at the time that "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into DOS 2.0 that caused Lotus 1-2-3 to breakdown when it was loaded. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader. The first two female executives hired at Microsoft in 1985 were recruited to meet federal affirmative action guidelines so that the company could qualify for a lucrative Air Force contract. One source says,"They would say, 'Well, let's hire two women because we can pay them half as much as we will have to pay a man, and we can give them all this other crap work to do because they are women.' That's directly out of Bill's mouth...." Gates treated one of these executives so badly that she asked to be transferred away from him. Microsoft managers used the company's e-mail system to secretly spy on employee work habits. Only those employees who worked weekends could collect bonuses. In time word got out and some employees logged into their e-mail on weekends with a modem from home so it would appear they had come in.


From Publishers Weekly
In a biting biography and computer-industry expose, two Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalists here relate in dramatic detail how a moody, computer-dazzled prep-school whiz kid, a Harvard dropout at age 19, formed his own company, now Microsoft Inc., with a few friends. They developed and marketed in aggressive style a series of personal-computer software applications and operating systems, the phenomenal sales of which by some accounts have made 37-year-old William H. Gates Jr. the richest person in America. Alternately cooperating and competing with industry giants Apple, Xerox and IBM, "Chairman Bill" worked 20-hour days in Levis and loafers and relaxed by driving his Mercedes at speeds up to 150 mph, as Microsoft set industry standards in desktop-computer languages and programs. Driven and hard-driving, Gates has engendered admiration, envy, imitation, complaints of unfairness and an FTC investigation. $60,000 ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters Wallace and Erickson present an in-depth portrait of Gates, the 35-year-old chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, from his early years as a young computer genius to his current status of billionaire. Throughout the work, the authors include recollections of Gates's business associates, friends, and former employees. They tell Microsoft's story from its founding in 1975 through developments in early 1992. Wallace and Erickson also chronicle the Federal Trade Commission's recent investigation of Microsoft for possible antitrust violations. The authors present a history of developments in the computer and software industry and the relationships among notable companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Apple. Daniel Ichbiah and Susan L. Knepper's The Making of Microsoft ( LJ 11/1/91) covers the same material, but Hard Drive provides a more detailed portrait of the complex Gates as well as a closer look at the organization of Microsoft. Highly recommended.- Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From the Publisher
First unauthorized biography of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates reveals the true story behind America's youngest billionaire. At the age of 37, with a net worth of over $8 billion, Bill Gates is the richest man in America, and Microsoft Corporation, which he cofounded in 1975, is currently the most successful software company. All should be right with Bill Gates's world. Yet two allies from the early years of Microsoft's stunning success have turned against the company, pre-trial hearings have just begun in Apple's $5 billion copyright infringement lawsuit, and IBM is fiercely trying to displace Microsoft's DOS with its own OS/2. More ominous still, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the House that Gates Built and could possibly break up Microsoft, as it did AT&T. How did Microsoft get to the top and will it stay there? To what extent does the Microsoft corporate personality reflect that of its eccentric and hard-driving chairman and CEO, Bill Gates? Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire is the first biography of the controversial Microsoft chairman. Despite Gate's attempt to discourage people from talking, authors James Wallace and Jim Erickson, reporters for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have interviewed his closest friends, associates, and former employees, as well as many of his business rivals, to provide a comprehensive portrait of this complex computer wunderkind, the company he made, and the industry he continues to shape.


From Brainchild to Billionaire Born outside Seattle to socially prominent parents, Gates was a gifted child with a photographic memory. He first encountered computers as a seventh-grader at the prestigious Lakeside private school, and quickly outstripped his instructors in expertise. As a Harvard student in 1973, he spent most of his time playing with computers--and winning at high-stakes poker--but he never graduated. Instead, education took a back seat to ambition. In 1974, Gates and his friend Paul Allen developed a BASIC language for the Altair 8080, the world's first personal computer. Surviving on catnaps and working on a Harvard computer rigged to mimic the Altair-- a machine they had never seen--their program ran successfully the first time it was tried."It was the coolest program I ever wrote," Gates said, and it set the industry standard. In 1975, with a vision of a computer in every home and the conviction that the fledgling computer industry was about to soar, the two formed Microsoft.Ironically, it was in collaboration with IBM--a company that dwarfed them in size, represented an entirely different corporate culture, and would later become a bitter rival--that Microsoft hit upon its greatest success to date. When IBM needed an operating system for its new PC, Big Blue turned to Microsoft. Gates turned to Seattle Computer products, a small, local computer company and, in what was one of a long series of brilliant business deals, purchased the rights to DOS for $50,000. Now labeled MS-DOS, it too became the industry standard and generates more than $200 million a year, helping to make Microsoft the most successful start-up company in the history of American business and enabling Gates to proceed with such projects as Word, Multiplan, OS/2 and Windows. When Microsoft went public in 1986, its shares were traded with a frenzy virtually unprecedented on Wall Street, and many of its employees became paper millionaires.


In early days when Microsoft was located in Albuquerque, after long, nighttime programming sessions, Gates would relax by speeding through the foothills in his Porsche 911. On a few late nights Gates and a friend would go to a road construction site and, after learning by trial and error to operate the complex machinery, drive them around. One night they held a bulldozer race (although neither could claim to be the winner) and another time Gates nearly backed over his Porsche. Under intense pressure by Gates to ship the long overdue Windows software, employee dedication quickly turned to fanaticism. One of the Windows testers showed up at the office with a sleeping bag. For a month he camped in his office working around the clock and sleeping only when he couldn't stay awake. The microkids found diversion by building bombs, setting off rockets, and holding full-volume jam sessions which brought the police. One ex-Microsoft employee said, "you felt you were at the center of the universe. That was the motivation, that and just trying to get clean code out there. It was an invigorating feeling to be working for Microsoft. And all this pounding by Steve Ballmer, and yanking by Bill, was the price you paid to be there."


From Kirkus Reviews
Two Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters take on--and fumble- -the fascinating tale of how an archetypal nerd built a multibillion-dollar enterprise that sets the standards for PC/work- station software. In Accidental Empires (1991), Robert X. Cringely tells more in brief about William Henry Gates III (cofounder of Microsoft) and his game plan than the authors manage to do in an entire book. Wallace and Erickson do make a competent job of chronicling the dramatic rise of a quirky Harvard dropout whose technical/commercial genius coexists uneasily with an impatient, demanding, and ultracompetitive personality. They follow Gates from privileged youth at a Seattle prep school through his creation (at 19) with Paul Allen of the first computer language for PCs and beyond, to the establishment of Microsoft, which eventually made them billionaires. Along the way, the single-minded Gates, now 36, helped develop the computer operating system DOS, forged a since- ruptured alliance with IBM, and evidently became willing to do whatever it takes to keep Microsoft atop the programming heap. Among other consequences of his intimidating management style are lost friendships--and a potentially ruinous lawsuit, in which Apple seeks billions in damages for copyright infringement. But by focusing on Gates's less admirable idiosyncrasies and on anecdotal trivia, the authors miss much of the point of his empire-building ends and means. Nor, absent wider-angle perspectives on the fragmented software industry, do they convey with any real impact how Gates intends to parlay essentially mediocre technology into a perdurably dominant market position. While the authors supply many of the pieces missing from the public record, they don't quite have the whole story. A full account of Gates and his empire probably awaits someone like Cringely, with a firmer grasp on where PCs are taking the Global Village. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From Book News, Inc.
The authors are journalists who have expanded their stories for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer into a full-length profile of Gates and his company. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Book Description
The true story behind the rise of a tyrannical genius, how he
transformed an industry, and why everyone is out to get him.In this fascinating exposé, two investigative reporters trace the hugely successful career of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Part entrepreneur, part enfant terrible, Gates has become the most powerful -- and feared -- player in the computer industry, and arguably the richest man in America. In Hard Drive, investigative reporters Wallace and Erickson follow Gates from his days as an unkempt thirteen-year-old computer hacker to his present-day status as a ruthless billionaire CEO. More than simply a "revenge of the nerds" story though, this is a balanced analysis of a business triumph, and a stunningly driven personality. The authors have spoken to everyone who knows anything about Bill Gates and Microsoft -- from childhood friends to employees and business rivals who reveal the heights, and limits, of his wizardry. From Gates's singular accomplishments to his equally extraordinary brattiness, arrogance, and hostility (the atmosphere is so intense at Microsoft that stressed-out programmers have been known to ease the tension of their eighty-hour workweeks by exploding homemade bombs), this is a uniquely revealing glimpse of the person who has emerged as the undisputed king of a notoriously brutal industry.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The true story behind the rise of a tyrannical genius, how he transformed an industry, and why everyone is out to get him.In this fascinating exposé, two investigative reporters trace the hugely successful career of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Part entrepreneur, part enfant terrible, Gates has become the most powerful — and feared — player in the computer industry, and arguably the richest man in America. In Hard Drive, investigative reporters Wallace and Erickson follow Gates from his days as an unkempt thirteen-year-old computer hacker to his present-day status as a ruthless billionaire CEO. More than simply a "revenge of the nerds" story though, this is a balanced analysis of a business triumph, and a stunningly driven personality. The authors have spoken to everyone who knows anything about Bill Gates and Microsoft — from childhood friends to employees and business rivals who reveal the heights, and limits, of his wizardry. From Gates's singular accomplishments to his equally extraordinary brattiness, arrogance, and hostility (the atmosphere is so intense at Microsoft that stressed-out programmers have been known to ease the tension of their eighty-hour workweeks by exploding homemade bombs), this is a uniquely revealing glimpse of the person who has emerged as the undisputed king of a notoriously brutal industry.

FROM THE CRITICS

San Francisco Chronicle

"A fascinating yarn of the extremes of admiration and hatred that such singlemindedness can inspire."

San Francisco Chronicle

A fascinating yarn of the extremes of admiration and hatred that such singlemindedness can inspire.

Publishers Weekly

In a biting biography and computer-industry expose, two Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalists here relate in dramatic detail how a moody, computer-dazzled prep-school whiz kid, a Harvard dropout at age 19, formed his own company, now Microsoft Inc., with a few friends. They developed and marketed in aggressive style a series of personal-computer software applications and operating systems, the phenomenal sales of which by some accounts have made 37-year-old William H. Gates Jr. the richest person in America. Alternately cooperating and competing with industry giants Apple, Xerox and IBM, ``Chairman Bill'' worked 20-hour days in Levis and loafers and relaxed by driving his Mercedes at speeds up to 150 mph, as Microsoft set industry standards in desktop-computer languages and programs. Driven and hard-driving, Gates has engendered admiration, envy, imitation, complaints of unfairness and an FTC investigation. $60,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June)

Library Journal

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters Wallace and Erickson present an in-depth portrait of Gates, the 35-year-old chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, from his early years as a young computer genius to his current status of billionaire. Throughout the work, the authors include recollections of Gates's business associates, friends, and former employees. They tell Microsoft's story from its founding in 1975 through developments in early 1992. Wallace and Erickson also chronicle the Federal Trade Commission's recent investigation of Microsoft for possible antitrust violations. The authors present a history of developments in the computer and software industry and the relationships among notable companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Apple. Daniel Ichbiah and Susan L. Knepper's The Making of Microsoft ( LJ 11/1/91) covers the same material, but Hard Drive provides a more detailed portrait of the complex Gates as well as a closer look at the organization of Microsoft. Highly recommended.-- Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.

Booknews