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T A B L E__T A L K

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R E C E N T L Y

AOL's insecurity complex
By David Cassel
The online service can't even keep its own staff bulletin boards private
(02/06/98)

Let's Get This Straight
By Scott Rosenberg
Technospeak, part 2: A turnkey solution in every pot
(02/05/98)

The Net's new turf wars
By Rebecca Vesely
Domain name mavericks take their case to Washington
(02/04/98)

The little city that could
By Doug McLellan
Tacoma's power company rolls its own Net and cable service
(02/03/98)

Drudging admiration
By Mike Godwin
Why the gossip may win in court -- but lose in the press
(02/02/98)

BROWSE THE ARCHIVES FOR Let's Get This Straight

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BY KARLIN LILLINGTON | While in Redmond, Wash. -- a town known for not much besides a certain software company that now occupies the site of a former chicken ranch -- I visited the Microsoft Company Store and the Microsoft Museum. Not just anybody can stroll into these inner sanctums: You have to be either a Microsoft employee or an invited guest, which means a family member or a "business visitor."

As press-trip pilgrims from Asia and Europe, we were under the mistaken impression that someone at Microsoft had brought us there to actually talk to us, to proselytize on behalf of the Mother Church, which has lately been besieged by a run of legal troubles and bad PR. I was hoping to find some explanation for the puzzling nature of Microsoft's recent strategies in its battle with the U.S. Justice Department -- the "crippled software" defense, the arrogant rhetoric.

But no: Instead, they sent us to the store and the museum. Yet how enlightening that proved to be! Where before I merely saw through a glass darkly when I tried to understand the mysteries of the Microsoft mind-set, I now saw the light -- and it bore a startling resemblance to the Start button on the Windows 95 taskbar.

At the heart of Microsoftian thinking are two words: "vision" and "products" -- and they are essentially interchangeable. Microsoft's vision is a world blanketed in Microsoft's products. And Microsoft believes that its products offer the world a vision of peace, love and understanding.

You doubt this? Then come on in to the Microsoft Museum. Drive down the ever-so-appropriately named Microsoft Way, park and enter. Make your way past the tempting exhibits of computing's embryonic products -- an Altair, the first IBM PC, an Apple II, a boxy little Mac -- go around a bend and come to the wall dedicated to "The Meaning of Brand Microsoft." The scripture begins, "In these times of rapid innovation and technological change, Microsoft can be a stabilizing force -- the brand that makes sense of all that is happening, and offers personally relevant benefits to people around the world."

Microsoft as corporate religion! This attitude permeates the small museum -- which is a shame, as there are wonderful exhibits on the history of computing, complete with relevant "Tid-byte" factoids, computers to play with, videos to watch. You can also take a Microsoft trivia quiz and discover that Microsoft's 302 acres in Redmond contain 35 buildings and 14,000 employees who consume 3,500 pieces of pizza and 48,000 beverages every day. In 1996, they produced 1,100 offspring -- thus proving that they do other things at night besides write code.

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