Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 to Mary and William Gates, II. His father was an attorney in Seattle, WA and his mother was a teacher. He attended the elite Lakeside private school, where he first got to a computer. His first program was a tic-tac-toe game, which he made on a mainframe that the school bought after a fund-raiser. He and his friend, Paul Allen, were always busy clanking away at the machine whenever they could get a chance. When they were older, they paid up to $40 an hour to use a terminal at computer companies, much like today's "cyber cafes."

Bill was accepted into Harvard University in Fall, 1973. He slacked off a bit, always trying to get the highest grades by putting in the least amount of time. In his second year, he dropped out of college and started Microsoft with Paul.

In short, Bill went from an upper middle-class family to the richest man in the world; who owns the biggest software company in the world, Microsoft. Microsoft and Bill have not yet reached their peak, but someday, they will (maybe?!).

At this point, Bill got a new idea. If he could get people to use his Internet tools, he could control most of the Internet. So, he made Microsoft an Internet Service Provider (ISP). He called his new service Microsoft Network (MSN) and incorporated it into Win95. MSN now has about 6 million subscribers, most paying him $20 a month (about a billion dollars a year!). He also made a web browser, called "Internet Explorer", and incorporated it into newer versions of Win95 so it would automatically be put onto your system. He did this for free (remember his system : low prices to get you hooked and then raise them). His Internet Explorer became #1. Currently, his only other "competition" is Netscape Navigator.

As for the future, Bill will make most of his money on the Internet. MSN is the second largest ISP (America Online is the largest.), and Internet Explorer or some other Microsoft web browser will be used by most. He will work to make everything computerized: televisions, telephones, lights, even the way you cook dinner... and supply the software to run on these computerized appliances. This will be a good thing for everyone, especially Bill. Everything will be interconnected on an information superhighway, which, in majority, he will build. This will all come to reality within a decade.

One of the first programs they created was Altair BASIC. This is a program that allows other people to more easily program the Altair. In 1978, a man named Kazuhiko Nishi called Bill. He read about Microsoft and was interested in its software. A few months later, he went to Microsoft where the two made a deal. Nishi paid $150M mainly for exclusive rights to license MS-BASIC in Asia. They remained business partners for 8 years, providing Microsoft with a link to Japan.

In 1984, IBM wanted a GUI and again called Microsoft, having been satisfied with MS-DOS. So, Microsoft and IBM teamed up and attempted to make an OS called OS/2. However, IBM wanted to make it more like a mainframe OS than a personal computer OS. This would make it more complex and not as good, but it would be compatible with stone-aged machinery. In 1987, IBM released its new computer, the PS/2, which ran an early version of OS/2.

Among its flaws were incompatibility with Windows software and a new microchannel bus. The new bus was not compatible with the thousands of add-on cards available. People liked their old

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Approximate Word count = 1771
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)