Where did I put my CD of The Road Ahead, Bill Gates’ utopian book about the computng future? I’d like to see if I can’t verify the following gem from Dave Gussow, a staff writer with the St. Petersburg Times, who revisited the book ten years after its publication:
“Doubtless I’ve made some foolish predictions, but I hope not too many.”
How can a billionaire look foolish?
And one more thing: The book came with a CD-ROM. Perhaps Gates couldn’t see everything in the future, including the fact that the CD-ROM book would not work with current versions of Windows. At least that’s what I found trying it on Windows XP and Windows 2000 machines.
Hmm. Any readers out there with a Road Ahead CD, an XP or 2000 machine, and the requisite curiosity? Let us know if Gussow’s right.
Update, 6:31 a.m., Washington, D.C., time: Dave G., you’re Da Man. I found the old CD and got the following error messge during the attempted installation on my XP machine: “Sorry, The Road Ahead does not run on Windows NT. Please install on a computer running Windows 3.10 or greater.” A lesson for Microsoft’s e-book side? There is a reason why, although I love e-books, I try not to buy those relying on proprietary formats. OpenReader, anyone?
The Cul de Sac Ahead: So far I haven’t been able to find an online e-book version of The Road Ahead–not even at Microsoft’s own site promoting Microsoft Reader. Perhaps with standards and with more e-books available, there’d be more buyers for Tablet PCs. Really, Bill G. Just as the Net was good for Microsoft in the end, so will be open standards for e-books and other digipubs. It’s folly to try to use the OS-specific Reader to try to keep people penned up within Windows, not when open standards will be inevitable and healthy.
I have problems to install the CD into a XP machine, any suggestion? The book is good, I liked it in 1996