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-- Gates' hands-on management style (and his company's deep pockets) gives Microsoft another attribute rare in any industry: the strength of its convictions. When a new product bombs, other firms tend to cut their losses. Not Microsoft. If Gates decides a market is strategically important-as he did with Windows and he says he has done with Bob-the company never gives up. "It doesn't matter if we bang our heads and fail," says Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's executive V.P. for sales and service. "We keep right on banging and banging and banging and banging and banging."
Inside room 1091 of building 5 (of 26) on the Microsoft campus, the air is filled with the faint ozone smell of burning circuits and the sound of hard drives whirring and rattling like old jalopies. This is the Engine Room, where 150 computers, loaded with all manner of monitors, microprocessors and plug-in cards, are putting Microsoft's newest product through last-minute stress tests. "It's like certifying the Boeing 777," says Rich Waddel, a Microsoft test manager. "There are about 15 million lines of code in this thing."
The "thing" is Windows 95, the latest update of a 10-year-old product that Microsoft is scheduled to release on Aug. 24. Windows 95 is Microsoft's bid to rid itself once and for all of its twin albatrosses: the legacy of dos (a primordial system that is starting to annoy even its most loyal users) and the competition from the Macintosh operating system (which continues to make Windows seem clunky by comparison).
Windows 95 has not only caught up with Macintosh but in some areas even outshines it. For example, to select a command from one of the Mac's "pull-down" menus requires users to press the mouse button, hold it down while dragging the cursor over the command and then release the button. It is an awkward sequence that new users find difficult to master and that can put a strain on the wrist. In Windows 95, the menus pop open with just one click and stay open until a second click launches a command.
Windows 95 has also straightened out some of the most annoying aspects of everyday computer use, from plugging in a new printer to communicating over a tangled corporate network. On Windows 95, you can instantly see the whole network just by clicking twice on an icon labeled Network Neighborhood. That brings up a map of all the computers in the "neighborhood,'' which you can get into simply by clicking on them (provided you have the necessary passwords). This may not sound like much, but when corporate network administrators see it, they will think they have died and gone to computer heaven.
Gates has suggested that Microsoft may sell 40 million copies of the $100 program in its first year. Conservative analysts put the figure at half that. Either way, its impact on the industry is likely to be huge. "Windows 95 will create the largest wave of hardware and software purchases the world has ever seen," says Micrografx's Grayson.
But many software developers are also uneasy about Microsoft's next big moment, for as Gates' influence steadily grows, their own role inevitably shrinks. They are reduced to writing second-string software, while Microsoft reserves the big programs for itself. Microsoft, as former WordPerfect executive Pete Peterson once put it, "is the fox that takes you across the river and then eats you."