Microsoft Trivia and Fun Facts
- The word Microsoft was first used by Bill Gates in a letter to Paul Allen, co-founder back in 1975. But, Bill initially wrote it as Micro-Soft. However, the Microsoft company (without a hyphen) was registered in November 1976 in New Mexico, the city where Paul Allen and Gates were working for their first big customer, MITS. Microsoft only moved to Redmond, Washington only in 1986.
- Not everyone can be a Pablo Picasso. However one can get a chance to see the works of such great and talented artists. And people at Microsoft are a tad too lucky for it is one of the biggest corporate art collectors with its art museums home to more than 5,000 pieces of contemporary art like sculptures, works on paper, paintings, photos, multimedia, etc.
- Profitability of Microsoft can be gauged from the fact that after going public in March 1986, its stock had split 9 times. This happens when the price of a share becomes too high.
- ‘Drink as much as you can’ is what Softies (MS Employees) follow from their heart. Microsoft offers free drinks inside the campus where more than 23 million drinks are consumed every year with Milk and Orange juice emerging as top favorites. The 35 Microsoft Cafeterias serve more than 38,000 people every day with Pizza being the most popular item on the menu.
- Imagine names like Interface Manager 98, Interface Manager 7, etc. Well for those who do not know, Interface Manager was the actual name of Windows OS in Microsoft and Bill Gates had planned to release it under the same name. However, it took an MS employee to convince that Windows is a better name. Microsoft adopts code names for its products before releasing them with Longhorn, Lone Star, Vienna, and Project Natal being a few.
- Isn’t it a huge number for a company to own more than 10000 patents and add 3000 patents every year? Microsoft is among the top 5 patent owners in the U.S. The 5,000th patent was for the Xbox 360 technology while the 10,000th patent was for Microsoft Surface. A $1,500 bonus is awarded to a Microsoft employee if the related patent is successful.
- Microsoft owns a dubious record of having the most number of crashes. It is believed that at one point in time, there used to be around 25 million crashes every day.
- More than 75% of computers worldwide run on Windows.
- The Windows operating system has 50 million lines of code (a line averages 60 characters) and grows 20% with every release. It’s put together by 7,200 people, comes in 34 languages, and has to support 190,000 devices– different models of digital cameras, printers, hand-helds, and so on.
- A few Windows versions which didn’t see the light of the day and couldn’t get released are:
1996 May 3 – Windows Nashville (Windows 96)1997-1998 – Windows Cairo. (Planned after Windows NT)1999 December – Windows Neptune. (Should have been the successor to Windows 2000 or Windows ME)
- Microsoft has a reputation for asking the weirdest questions in a job interview. Considered to conduct one of the toughest and grueling interview processes for job-seekers, Microsoft can suddenly ask you “Why is a manhole cover round?”. Such questions challenge the creative thinking of people on the other side of the table. Read: Over 50 products discontinued by Microsoft. Know of any more? Please do share!
