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Gates On Windows: 'What A Mess'

In a now semi-famous e-mail rant in 2003, outgoing Microsoft chairman Bill Gates lamented the colossal user-unfriendliness of his company’s primary product, Windows. Now that message has been given voice by a Seattle radio host.

Dated Jan. 15, 2003 and sent to Jim Allchin and a few other MS execs, the message was among internal e-mails turned over during the long Dept. of Justice antitrust suit against the company. In it, Gates recounts his unsuccessful attempts to download Moviemaker from the Microsoft.com site and buy the Digital Plus pack. Suffice it to say it did not go well. “What an absolute mess,” Gates fumes at one point, sounding like a few million other frustrated users of Microsoft products.

Now Dave Ross of KIRO-AM/710 in Seattle has channeled the Voice of God, err, Bill, for a dramatic reading on his morning program. It’s like hearing the Pope complain about all the rigamarole of Sunday Mass. As Gates takes his final bows on the stage of the world’s largest software company, it’s worth a listen. And a guffaw.

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