A Tale of Two Redmond Companies (1980s – 2000)

A Tale of Two Redmond Companies  (1980s – 2000)

I remember driving on I-405 and seeing the three buildings on both sides of the freeway that had large signs saying MICROSOFT. Of course when they bought farmland for their campus, these buildings went to new tenants.

A visit to this campus was like visiting a college campus. There are hordes of young people hurrying everywhere.

In one building there was The Microsoft Museum. Above it was The Microsoft Store. In the early days anyone could go in the store and buy discounted software. In more recent years the store was only available to employees.

The museum was small but interesting. It had old computers that showed what Microsoft started out writing software for. I remember that Microsoft had created a BASIC cartridge for the Atari Home Computer and had written the BASIC for an early Radio Shack computer that was portable about the size of a present day tablet (but much thicker) and it's small text screen didn't make it into what we would call a notebook or laptop. I don't remember seeing either of these items on display.

One other item I didn't see in their museum was a copy of Bob. Bob was a graphical program that had an animated smiley face with nerdy glasses. It was supposed to help people transition from DOS to Windows. The program itself was good. The marketing of it was not good.

You see, some software will have two requirements listed. There will be the minimal requirements which will list the processor type or speed, the amount of system memory and other items such as graphic power, operating system or other software needed; and the amount of hard drive space needed. A computer that meets this minimum will not necessarily “run” the software, it will more likely make the software crawl, stumble, and lurch as it falls into a coma.

The other listing is the Recommended Requirements. These are the levels of hardware that the software needs to be useful to the consumer.

Microsoft likes to brag about how many computers their new software is installed on. To boost those numbers Microsoft pushed manufacturers to install Bob on computers that didn't meet the Recommended Requirements.

Reviewers and users of Microsoft Bob that had fast computers thought it was great. Those who had lesser computers couldn't uninstall it fast enough to get their computers running again.

Years later, Microsoft pushed Vista onto manufacturer's computers that didn't have enough resources to run it well. Do you see a marketing pattern here?

So, when I noticed that the Microsoft Museum didn't have Bob on display, I asked about it. The employee had never heard of Bob. I told her basically what you just read and suggested that they put Bob on display. After all, failures are a part of history too!

The next time I visited I saw a box on display but no information about it. I praised the addition but suggested they put some placard about what it was.

In the mid-80s I was working for a copier company in a business park in Redmond. This was something new to me, I had seen business parks before but this was the first time I had worked for a company located in one. It took a little getting used to.

Just down the street from the business park was a long narrow building that despite it's new look, also had an abandoned feel to it. There was an old wreck of a pickup that sat out front for seemingly weeks. I guessed that it belonged to the janitor, partly due to it's look and the broom sticking up from the sidewall of the bed like a flag. Your vision tended to focus on this because it was the only vehicle in a large empty parking lot.

The sign said Nintendo of America. At that time the company had arcade machines which were quite popular and some home versions of Donkey Kong for the Atari game systems.

The next year they released the first Nintendo Game System for the home. Soon they had another identical building opposite the first. Also they were competing with Microsoft and everyone else in Redmond for warehouse space.


©  Copyright 2016 by Christopher Carson