Have you ever had one of those days when you can’t seem to get your computer to do anything you want it to? Say you want to download Windows Movie Maker, so you go to the Microsoft web site, check out the download page, and simply can’t find it anywhere. When you do finally find it after performing a search, the page times out before you can download it. And once you’ve finally managed to get it on your PC, the installation process is excruciating.
It turns out you’re not the only person who has trouble getting Windows to do what you want it to. The above scenerio is described in great detail in an email Bill Gates sent in 2003. This letter was released to the public along with a huge pile of other communications as part of the antitrust litigation Microsoft’s been involved in for the past few years. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has posted the text of the entire email, but here are a few of our favorite parts:
Upon installing Movie Maker, Gates checks the add/remove programs dialog to see if it shows up, and instead he finds a list of programs with obscure names like Windows XP Hotfix Q329048. hHe writes “Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?” he asked. “The file system is no longer usable, the registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place, but now it is all crapped up.”