Bill Who ?????? (Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date)

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Product:	Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date
Date:	11/05/01 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great read

Disadvantages: none apart from price

This book is one of the set texts for my Level 1 OU course. I would have never picked it up to read let alone buy if it were not. It costs £8.99 but I only pay 25% of the cost. As my work is sponsoring me. And pay 75% of all fees and other costs that are incurred during my course.

Do you know any of the following names?

Bill Gates (yes a real easy one to start)

Paul Allen

Steve Jobs

Steve Wozniak

Bob Noyce

What do they all have in common? They are the major league players that have influenced the computing world.

Bill Gates ?Microsoft (you all knew that one)

Paul Allen-Microsoft

Steve Jobs-Apple

Steve Wozniak-Apple

Bob Noyce-Intel


If it were not for the people above we would not have the computer industry that we all have today. Bill Gates and Paul Allen started out many years ago and created Microsoft. Steve Job and Steve Wozniak started Apple. And Bob Noyce started Intel. He and bunch of friends left Fairchild to start Intel. Now the biggest chip manufacture in the world.

The book is written in an informal style, which makes it easy to read. Robert X Cringley has been in the computer industry for years. He has met all the big names. They might never want to meet him again after what he writes but he has met them all.

The book starts all the way back in the 1950?s. The copy that I have read was updated in 1996/1997.

The one thing that really hits you in the face and Robert X Cringley keeps reminding of three main factors

1) It all happened more or less by accident

2) The people who made it happen were amateurs

3) And for the most part they still are


The book is fascinating and makes you see that most of the names above where lucky and no more. They had an idea and it worked for them. And they where about when computing industry was just starting to take off. So
they got on early. To do the same thing now a days. You would have to have the most fantastic all singing and all dancing application or computer.

It also makes you see how funny it is that Bill Gates want to be taken seriously. But when you read the deals that they made in the past and how when Microsoft first started all code had to go to Bill Gates for him to look at. He would make changes and then send it back down to the programmers. Bill Gates was never a good programming at the best of times. He went to Harvard to study maths but as he knew he would never be the best at maths. He did not want to do it any more. Not bad to be the one richest men in the world when you are amateur.

The book also covers big blue IBM to the rest of us. And how the world use to hang on every word they use to utter. But times have changed.

This books is just not for nerds but for any one who wants to know how it all started with out making you feel about an inch tall. Also it is not full of jargon that makes people run away.

I enjoyed the book and it only went on to re-enforce my thoughts on certain people and how they behaviour.

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