Defending Microsoft’s Products and Bill Gates

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At the risk of getting flamed from in the blogsphere, I’ve got to stand up and voice my opinion against Charles Cooper’s “Gates and the code-jockey elite”.

It is generally filled with negative comments about Bill Gates being Chief Software Architect and a handful of products, specifically: Internet Explorer, .NET My Services, Longhorn, Security, and Search.

For some reason, he chose to not mention the plethora of great products that have come out over the last 5 years. These include, but are by no means limited to the latest versions of: MSN Explorer, BizTalk Server, ISA Server, MSN Music, Speech Server, Hotmail, Exchange Server, the MSNBC Newsbot, Live Communications Server, the advances to SQL Server over the years with Notifications, Analysis, and Reporting, MSN’s Desktop Search (which Charles’ chose to ding), Host Integration Server, Windows CE (Pocket PC & Smartphone), Windows XP Embedded (have you seen that thing!), Encarta and Encarta Kids, Operations Manager, MSN Messenger, Storage Server. And of course if we throw in the products that are coming out soon, such as Visual Studio (Whidbey) and SQL Server (Yukon), then it gets even better. Just think of all the technologies in these products!

Yes, I list a ton of products, but I work with all of these as part of my job or in my personal life, and trust me, they really are great products. And I’m sure I missed a few that I rely on but never think about.

We always have more to do, but who doesn’t want to continually improve and offer more of what our customers want? I am not only an employee, but I am very much a customer of Microsoft’s products too. So are my family and friends, and yes, they complain to me when something goes wrong and often give me feedback, which I do relate back to the appropriate product group. I use a Toshiba Tecra M200 Tablet PC every single day and my only TV is a Windows XP Media Center PC where I also run the latest amazing versions of Digital Image Pro, Photostory, Movie Maker, and Media Player (when I use it as a PC with music not a TV with music). And of course, I live in Outlook, Word, Excel, my smart phone, PowerPoint, and OneNote every other day. These are great devices, great applications, and great accomplishments to be proud of over the last 5 years. I thank everyone who has worked on them, including Bill Gates.

So Charles, what about these accomplishments? Does Bill Gates get no credit for any of it? He does in my book!