THE final scene of Bill Gates╒s real-life remake of Revenge of the Nerds was beamed across the world by satellite yesterday as the boyish looking billionaire formally unveiled Windows 95, the world╒s first celebrity computer programme.
After three years of development, a year of delays and months of the most intense hype ever to attend a product launch, the bespectacled Microsoft chairman, complete with pudding basin haircut, declared that the new ╥operating system╙ would ╥unlock the potential of personal computing╙.
The opening bars of the Rolling Stones╒ Start Me Up, borrowed by Microsoft for a reported $8 million (ú5.5 million), blared out across Microsoft╒s leafy ╥campus╙ outside Seattle as giant screens counted down the seconds to the launch.
The audience of 2,500 journalists and computer industry executives, bussed to a tent city erected on playing fields where Microsofties take time out from their brainwork to play softball, roared as members of the team which created Windows 95 confided that their personal hygiene and dating had suffered while they worked on the project.
Perhaps acknowledging that little about Windows 95 remains unsaid, Microsoft PRs disclosed that the development team consumed an estimated 2,283,600 cups of coffee and 4,850 lbs of popcorn while toiling over the new product.
Mr Gates, 39, laid on hot air balloons, a ferris wheel and free food and Coke to sustain the enthusiasm of anyone not intoxicated by the prospect of smoother multi-tasking and being able to call computer files any name they want.
He also enlisted late night chat show host, Jay Leno, who cracked that Windows 95 was ╥so powerful that it can keep track of all of OJ╒s alibis at once╙.
Though he and Mr Leno tried valiantly to demonstrate advantages, such as the ability to switch backgrounds between Sixties and Leonardo Da Vinci themed backgrounds, Mr Gates confessed it was difficult to convey the programme╒s simplicity because ╥we have eliminated the complexity so there╒s almost nothing to show╙.
His address was beamed by satellite to simultaneous launch events in 40 cities around the world. In New York, the Empire State Building was lit with the Windows 95 logo while a Polish submarine was commandeered to take journalists into ╥a world without Windows╙.
In cynical old Europe, where, thanks to the time differences, the Micro-wave broke a few hours earlier, things were different. Bemused tourists watched 450 Microsoft employees, customers and guests file into London╒s Equinox Club. Gates╒s video address was a mere five minutes and the ╥world╒s richest man╙ was introduced by the London master of ceremonies, Jonathan Ross.
The purple-suited Mr Ross rounded off Mr Gates╒s solemn video appearance by commenting that ╥money can buy you many things, but it does not necessarily buy you a decent haircut╙.
