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Summary: A Must Read
Review: This book was GREAT. I found it to be a very enjoyable read. It was very imformative about Bill Gates. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Microsoft or the journey of one of the richest men in the world.
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Summary: A history of how the PC software industry grew up
Review: This book was read while a team of software marketing executives were driving to Comdex. It was so good we traded off until it was done--and then we worried about our recent contract with Microsoft! Hard Drive is a history of how the PC software industry grew up. It uses a dynamic no-holds bar style. If there is a lesson about alliances to be learned, it's in here. It rates #3 on the "Chanimal" top ten list.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Drive
Review: This is a great book if you want to learn more about Bill Gates and how he became the billionaire he is today. Hard Drive allows the reader to get to know Bill Gates on a personal level, thus making it easier to understand him. I highly reccomend this book if you want to know more about Bill Gates and his MIcrosoft Empire.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Drive
Review: This is a great book if you want to learn more about Bill Gates and how he became the billionaire he is today. Hard Drive allows the reader to get to know Bill Gates on a personal level, thus making it easier to understand him. I highly reccomend this book if you want to know more about Bill Gates and his MIcrosoft Empire.
Rating:
Summary: Sleep Under your Desk, Skip the Shower, Blow off Harvard
Review: This is the first "big" biography of Gates and is written by local reporters with a feel for Seattle and the indigenous industry which has been guaranteed a place in world history all because Bill Gates decided to jump in his Porsche one day and get out of Albuquerque as fast as he could drive. Home to the ancestral Seattle, with Mom-very-rich-family and dad respected-lawyer with connections all over the place: None of which would have been worth anything unless Bill was obsessed with software, starting with Lunar Lander, traffic light control programs, and then of course the big IBM success.The intensity of Gates comes out clearly here. Wearing the smae shirt forever, paying some lady to do his laundry and pay his bills, ripping the radio out of his car so he can think more intently, sleeping under the desk. And lots of foul language. This strain of the book does not come out as clearly in later books, now that Gates is married, a major philanthropist, and under the gun of all of the politically connected Utah software Republicans he defeated in the business wars. The book has a funny scene where Gates refers to the 70 year old head of Novell as "Grandfather from Hell." When Judge Stanley Sporkin read this book over a weekend (hoping to develop more obsessive behavior like his anti-hero Bill?), it caused him to try to quash the DOJ consent decree negotiated with Microsoft in the first antitrust case. Sporkin saw something evil in Microsoft and Gates as a result of reading this book. Microsoft got Sporkin's judicial spike of the consent decree reversed by another court, and got Sporkin dumped from the case (I seem to recall). The childhood portions of the book are revealing. There are the usual recitations of how smart Bill was as a kid, but also a hint that he had to change schools because of adjustment problems. Prior to junior high. The early years in N.M. are recounted with a sense of drama, and in that sense, reading this book prepares you to understand more completely the details in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" (e.g., the scene in the diner where Bill successfully argues Paul Allen into a larger equity chunk for Bill, less for Paul). Bill going "legal" early to protect the I.P. rights to Microsoft's software is also key to his later empire, and the authors cover it early, along with the court battles with the MIPS guy over rights to Bill and Paul's work. My reaction to reading this right after it came out was to buy stock in MSFT, which Judge Sporkin may have also done, I guess. I must have skipped over the rabid anti-Microsoft stage of my development. ... Bill owns it and stole it from Patterson? So what, he bought it. Gates seems to have the qualities of an inventor, a construction foreman, and a broker. This puts him in Henry Ford's league, and he seems to be a lot smarter, as well. Go Microsoft.
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Summary: Great book that dives into Gates' personal life
Review: This was a great book that not only showed the incredible business side of Microsoft but also talked about in detail the life of Bill Gates. I now see a complete differnt side of Bill Gates - both as an incredible business man and also a spoiled little brat.
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