Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...were all "user friendly," although many proved painfully difficult to master. This year, software is "integrated," which means that information from one program can sometimes be merged with data from another. Industry watchers are now getting a preview of the pet phrase for 1984. Two leading computer software companies, Microsoft and VisiCorp, are offering products with "windows," a system that lets users run several different programs at once, each displayed in a separate section of the video screen...
VisiCorp, the San Jose, Calif.-based publishers of the successful VisiCalc program for financial analysis, next month will begin shipping its VisiOn windowing package. Meanwhile, Microsoft, the leading personal computer software publisher (1983 sales: $100 million), has unveiled a competing product called Windows. Said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates: "This is a milestone in software...
...company has traditionally stressed service and reliability. The PC, for example, was not a technological breakthrough and is assembled largely from parts made by outside suppliers. Its microprocessing heart is manufactured by California-based Intel, while the monitor's display tube is produced by Japan's Matsushita. Microsoft of Bellevue, Wash., provides the operating system, or master program. The PC has been successful largely because the IBM name symbolizes confidence and security in a field known for instability and uncertainty...
...just as tough on outside suppliers. While developing software for the Personal Computer, workers at Peachtree Software in Atlanta began to refer to the company by another three initials, KGB, after IBM ordered the installation of pa per shredders and locked security areas. Microsoft, which also developed software programs for the PC, had to stiffen its procedures after IBM conducted an unannounced inspection and discovered that part of the then secret computer had been temporarily left unguarded...
Indeed, when Microsoft (1982 sales: $34 million), the Bellevue, Wash., company that developed the operating system used on the IBM personal computer, wanted someone to run its marketing program, it looked to the cosmetics industry. Last month Microsoft hired Rowland Hanson, vice president of Neutrogena, a maker of skin-care products, as head of marketing and public relations. Admits Hanson: "When I came here I didn't even know how to turn a computer on." But he does know how to sell packaged goods. Says company President Bill Gates, who founded Microsoft...