Members of the group:  Padraic Lowe

                             Michelle Kilpatrick

                             Christopher Kane

                             Tony Liken           

                             David Hutchings 

                                                          Gareth Kennedy

An Introduction to Microsoft

The Microsoft Corporation is a worldwide corporation that creates computer technologies.  It was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in New Mexico on the 4th of April 1975.  The company rose to success with MS-DOS during the mid 1980's, this was then followed by their range of home operating systems (Windows) with the sucess of these products they dominated the home computer market.

Microsoft's Industry Include's:

• Computer Software
• Computer Hardware
• Publishing
• Video Games
• Research and development

The Founders of Microsoft

Paul Allen                                                                      Bill Gates

Bill Gates is one of the founders of Microsoft, he was born in 1955 on the 28th of October. He founded Microsost with Paul Allen. He is the 3rd richest person in the world. He was the CEO and chief software architect during his career in Microsoft. He recently stepped down as CEO in January 2000, he then created the job of chief software architect. In June 2006 he then announced he would only be working part-time at Microsoft and work full-time at his charity and research organisation called the Bill and Melinda Gates Organisation which he and his wife created in 2000. The organisation gives grants and donations to research programs for healthcare, educational services such as schools and also to end poverty.

Bill Gates is one of the most famous entrepeneurs of the computing world, he has been able to create a huge empire with a piece of software and an idea. Though his tactics for business have been critisized by many people as they think his tactics are anti-competitive. These claims landing him in court many times.

Paul Allen is the co-founder of Microsoft along side Bill Gates. He was born in Seattle, Washington on January 21, 1953. Allen attended Lakeside school the same as Bill Gates, even though Allen was 2 years older than Gates they made friends due to there common interest with programming and computers.

When Allen graduated from Lakeside school he went on to Washington State University. He then dropped out after 2 years to work for Honeywell in Boston as a programmer.

Paul Allen also has made his own charity organisation called the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation which donates money to health services as well as science and technology programs, around 60% of his donations are give to non-profitable organisations and gives away huge amounts of money every year. Apprently he gives away around $30 million in grants a year and as of 2007 he has given away $900 million of his funds away. Allen is also interested in sports, he owns NBA and NFL teams the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks as well as a few other sport teams including a stadium.

Gates first became interested in software when he was in eighth grade at Lakeside School when a club called The Mothers Club used money that was made during rummage sale in the school. This money was used to buy a ASR-33 Teletype Terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric computer. This is when he discovered his interest in programming, he started programming the GE computer using BASIC. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that allowed the user to play against the computer. He was amazed at what a program could do with coding and continued to develop his skills on software programming.

Bill and his friend Paul along with a few others became so fascinated with computers that they started to skip class in order to spend more time in the computer rooms. They used to write programs and read computer books to find out how the machines worked. They soon learned how to hack computers, crash valuable files and they were eventually removed from the computer rooms as a result of their mischief. A short while after Bill and his mates were hired by a computer company where they had to find Bugs and explore how computers crash. Instead of paying the boys for their time the company offered them something better which was unlimited computer time. Gates said that this was when they got into computers full time as they were on them night and day. They studied manuals, explored the system and hounded employees with questions until they had found a base of knowledge that would eventually lead to the formation of Microsoft.

The computer group that they were working for went out of business and then soon after Gates and Allen were employed by Information Sciences Inc were they wrote programs for payroll. They received a wage and also had unlimited computer time for their efforts. Soon they were hired and contracted by many firms were they continued to develop their knowledge about programming.

In 1973 Gates enrolled in Harvard University as a prelaw student. He and Allen always wanted to open their own business and Allen was always trying to encourage an unsure Gates to dropout of university to work in computing. Then it all hit off when Allen seen the first Micro computer in a magazine. Paul showed this to Gates and they realized the home PC was going to explode and that someone would have to provide software for the machines. Gates and Allen met with Altair Manufactures and informed them that they had a program written for them. It worked perfectly and everyone was impressed with what gates and Allen created. They sold the program and saw that they could do this for real and within a year Gates dropped out of university and Microsoft was formed.

At the Beginning Microsoft went through some rough years but eventually were able to licence MS-DOS to IBM. The IBM PC took the public by storm and its success signalled success for Microsoft. In 1986 the company went public and Gates became a 31- year old Billionaire. The next year the first version of windows was introduced and by 1993 a million copies per month were being sold.

To date Microsoft has made a huge array of products, there most recent being Windows Vista, this being the new operation system taking the place of XP. Microsoft have got contracts that mean most computers sold come with some sort of Windows operating system installed. They have created a new operating system nearly every 2 years. Each new OS being an improvement of the last one, adding new features and a better GUI.

Here is a list of Microsoft's Windows operating systems:

• Windows 3.1
• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows ME
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista

Microsoft also has other products other than operating systems. They also make software programs to use on Windows OS and recently have starting competing in the gaming industry.

Microsoft bought Hotmail, which is the worlds most popular email service. They renamed it MSN Hotmail and then created there own instant messaging clients called MSN Messenger, recently changing its name to Windows Live Messenger. The reason Microsoft started creating a instant messaging service was to start competing with AOL Instant Messenger.

Gaming Market

The gaming market has been dominated by Sony and Nintendo for years. The consoles mainly used were Nintendo's NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii while Sony using there extremely popular Playstation series. Microsoft seen this market as something they would like to compete in and created there own gaming console called the XBOX. This console was brought out around the same time as Sony's new Playstation 2 and Nintendo's Gamecube. This created the still continuing Console Wars. This being a war between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for the most sales, best games and most powerful gaming system. Nintendo recently went in a new direction being innovative and creating the hugely popular Wii. While Sony and Microsoft continue to battle with there new consoles the Playstation 3 and the XBOX 360. Microsoft brought there console out before Sony to try and make early sales though Sony created a more powerful system which uses the new Blu-Ray technology which is taking the DVD;world by storm slowly reducing the numbers of DVDs being sold and made.