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Something missing? Suggest a book-- write
a review!
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Bibliography & Bookstore
Books
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Order
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Cringely, Robert X.
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of the Silicon
Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign
Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date. New
York: Harper Business, 1996 (revised). A highly
entertaining and accessible account of industry
events from the 1970s through 1995, with a focus on
the unique personalities of its major players.
Cringely is the pen name of InfoWorld's
anonymous gossip columnist. The book also provided
the basis of the Public Broadcasting series, The
Triumph of the Nerds.
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G., Bill.
The Secret Diary of Bill Gates. Andrews
McMeel, 1998. Dedicated followers of Internet
culture will probably already have discovered their
own favorite web haunts, but for our money, one of
the 'nets consistently brighter corners is "The
Secret Diary of Bill Gate" authored each day by
that original man of mystery, "Bill G.". Who is
Bill's favorite Spice Girl? What does he think of
Steve, Marc and Larry, and all those other losers?
And that Justice Department chick -- what's her
problem? The Secret Diary reveals all, including
Bill G's selections for the "Top Ten Worst Sites on
the Web." As you may have already surmised, this
site was ranked number three on the list, right
after Netscape and the Secret Diary itself, but
above Apple, Intuit, IBM and the Justice
Department. And yes, Boycott Microsoft made the
book -- still Number Three, but trying harder every
day!
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Gates, Bill (with Nathan
Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson). The Road
Ahead. New York: Viking, 1995. This vanity
volume was seemingly formulated to secure Gates'
image as the world's foremost high technology seer.
But instead the first edition of this book, in
particular, unintentionally reveals his tunnel
vision and lack of flair for genuinely original
thinking. The book also finds Gates in the rather
unpleasant mode of taking more credit than he
deserves for key products, and oddly confused about
basic mathematical concepts (the latter, in the
original hardcover edition only).
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Kaplan, Jerry. Start Up: A
Silicon Valley Adventure. Houghton Mifflin,
1995. Kaplan had the presence of mind to keep a
detailed journal of events from the founding to the
eventual demise of his creation, the late GO
Corporation, pioneers in the development of
pen-based, hand-held computers, and to turn it into
this remarkably witty volume. This book should
serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who might
cross paths with Microsoft and hope to escape with
their intellectual property intact.
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Manes, Stephen and Paul Andrews.
Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an
Industry -- and Made Himself the Richest Man in
America. New York: Touchstone, 1994.
Encyclopedic and detailed, if sometimes overly
reverential.
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Rohm, Wendy
Goldman. The Microsoft Files: The Secret Case
Against Bill Gates. Random House, 1998. In this
slash-and-burn volume, Rohm gets personal, really
personal, in her inditement of Gates the CEO and
Gates the person, often seamlessly combining
accusations of competitive and personal excess.
Full of information from inside informants, this
book was instantly condemned by Microsoft as "a
work of fiction," even as the company leaned on
Rohm and other journalists to ferret out her
sources. Fact or fiction? You decide -- but if
Rohm's book doesn't leave you feeling just a bit
paranoid about Microsoft's ambitions, nothing
will.
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Wallace, James and Jim Erickson.
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the
Microsoft Empire. New York: James Wiley &
Sons, 1992. A highly detailed, well-written
business and personal biography of the man and the
company from its (and his) inception, through late
1991. Gates apparently thought it was hatchet job,
but this effort is a factual, thorough, objective
and revealing work of journalism. So far, the
definitive work on the subject.
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Wallace, James. Overdrive:
Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace.
New York: James Wiley & Sons, 1997. The sequel
to Hard Drive, takes the story of Gates and
Microsoft up-to-date, and includes a lengthy
discussion of the machinations of Microsoft and the
Department of Justice, as well as other antitrust
matters. Equally comprehensive and expertly
assembled.
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Articles
Alsop, Stewart. How
Bad is Windows 95?. The
leading technology writer for Fortune Magazine and
long-time Microsoft booster asks this question, and arrives
at a surprising verdict: "... bad enough that over time,
users get more and more frustrated with it rather than
feeling more and more comfortable. Bad enough that it is
costing corporations lots of money to keep it
working."
Blackford, John. The
Case Against
Microsoft.
"Microsoft's ability and willingness to control proprietary
standards that span the world's computing resources is in
fact dangerous," writes the editor of Computer
Shopper. The Boycott Microsoft site is quoted and
referenced prominently in this article, written for what has
always been a bastion of Microsoft-friendly
journalism.
Gleick, James. Making
Microsoft Safe for Capitalism
A provocative article originally printed in the New York
Times Magazine on November 5, 1995. Gleick documents
Microsoft's anti-competitive practices in remarkable detail,
along with some choice quotes from Gates, Ballmer and other
high technology honchos inside and outside the
company.
Livingston, Brian. Think
you've got PC problems? Oh, the troubles I've
seen. This Infoworld
Windows guru reports, "My personal [Windows 95]
workstation is so buggy that ... [it] crashes at
least once or twice a day, usually in broad daylight for no
apparent reason. ... The answer, I'm sure, is to get a new
hard drive, format it, install the latest version of Windows
on it, and reinstall everything important from the old
drive."
Published: 19 March 1998, Last Revised 29
March 1999
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Microsoft netted around $4 billion from OS sales
last year -- you'd think they could spend a few bucks fixing
it all. But it's more likely that O.J. will nab the real
killer on the back nine at Pebble Beach than that Microsoft
will voluntarily banish the heartache it puts users through.
PAUL SOMERSON, PC
Computing
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