The road ahead
BILL GATES
Bill Gates' book might not have the set the world on fire, but
it was a predictable best-seller, and this electronic version
seeks to take its paper cousin into a new dimension. Frankly,
given the subject, the CD-ROM could have been a little easier
to get going. It installs itself automatically under Windows 95
(or manually on 3.1), though there's no uninstaller, a shame given
it fiddles with files like SYSTEM.INI that human beings don't
want to know about. When I first ran it, I got an error message
saying there was a problem with a device driver - on a hunch I
reduced the number of colours to 256 and it ran fine. This simply
shouldn't happen. Once it was going, though, it was stylish and
nicely presented. There's a futures section with reasonably long
videos looking at the I.T. of the home, business and school in
ten years - this is very well done (though the tour of a computer
model of the Gates house was undertaken in such a reverential
tone that I was looking for the complimentary sick bag). There
are rather uninspiring interviews with the great man, and there's
the full text of his book with plenty of useful hypertext links.
This is a difficult one. I don't really want to wade through a couple of hundred pages of a book on screen, yet the hypertext is useful. I suspect I would have preferred having a bundle of the conventional book for a straight read and the online version for reference. Whether you admire Mr Gates or hate him, though, it's always interesting to get a view on someone who has this much influence on our world.
Overall - installation could be better, and I'd prefer to combine it with a real book, but an interesting insight into a key player's view of the future.
Priced at £14.99 in the UK. Produced by Penguin books.