After repelling the provocation of B.A.D.D., Zhang Lexing shifted his focus to VisualSystem, and in the hustle and bustle of 1984, it passed quietly, and by the time Zhang Lexing came back to his senses, it was already the New Year's holiday. In this year, relying on the efforts of all employees of the company, VisualSystem has made great progress, not only to maintain the supremacy of the operating system on the PC, but also to expand rapidly in the office software market, while continuing to compete for the North American market with Lotus and WP company, it has also begun to set foot in the overseas market, the living space of Microsoft office software has been continuously compressed, and Microsoft's performance has maintained a steady downward trend.

After the New Year, in order to acquire a compression software to add to the Kylin system, Zhang Lexing was pulled by Yang Xinxin to board a Pan Am flight to Perryville before he had time to spend the holiday syndrome. As soon as she got on the plane, Yang Xinxin sat in the window seat as usual, Zhang Lexing had to sit next to her, and the other seat was occupied by a bearded glasses brother.

The voyage time of this trip was relatively long, Yang Xinxin habitually leaned on the seat and began to make up for sleep, while Zhang Lexing was not sleepy at all, so he had to sit bored in his seat and flip through magazines to pass the time, occasionally looking up to look around. The bearded and glasses brother next to him was also reading a book, Zhang Lexing glanced at it from the side, it seemed to be a book related to programming, it seemed that this guy was a programmer. Zhang Lexing glanced at the bearded and glasses brother a few more times, and always felt as if he had seen each other, and there was a sense of familiarity. After pondering for a while, Zhang Lexing finally remembered that the old man in front of him was Dan Bricklin, the chairman of the software art company and the developer of the spreadsheet software VisiCalc.

"Hello! Is it Mr. Bricklin, please? Zhang Lexing was afraid of recognizing the wrong person, so he asked carefully.

"Yes, you are?" The bearded glasses brother turned sideways and looked at Zhang Lexing in surprise.

"I'm Zhang Lexing of VS Company, it's nice to meet you." Zhang Lexing took one of his business cards and handed it to Bricklin.

"I've heard of VS company, it's developed quite fast over the years, I didn't expect the chairman of the company to be so young." Brickering took the business card and looked at it, and said with a complicated expression.

"Mr. Bricklin, you're also on an errand in Perryville?" Zhang Lexing asked curiously.

"Alas!" Brickerin sighed, and said with some interest: "It's to do business, but it's not to contact business, but to sell his company." ”

Perhaps it was because of the recent pressure, or perhaps because Zhang Lexing seemed to be quite pleasing to the eye, Brickerin unconsciously began to talk about the recent situation of his company, and Zhang Lexing only then realized that the software art company was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 80, the software art company was still in full swing, and then the rise of the PC, Brickerlin only took the last train due to the lawsuit, and by the time the PC version of the VisiCalc spreadsheet software was launched, it was too late, and under the attack of similar products from other companies, the sales of software art companies deteriorated, and in 84, the sales of a whole year were only 2,500 sets, which was not even a fraction of a month for other companies. The company's financial situation is also getting worse and worse, and after several years of making ends meet, the debt has reached $2.2 million, and if a solution is not found soon, the company will soon enter the process of bankruptcy liquidation. Although Brickerlin was reluctant, he could only reluctantly find a new owner for the software art company he founded, and this time he came to Perryville to negotiate terms with a company that was interested in acquiring his company.

As the pioneer of spreadsheet software, Software Art Company holds some relevant patents, and if it can be acquired, it is believed that it will be of great benefit to the development of VisualSystem in the office software market. So Zhang Lexing woke up Yang Xinxin and discussed the matter with her in a whisper. After listening to Zhang Lexing's retelling, Yang Xinxin keenly discovered the opportunity, and forgave Zhang Lexing for her sin of waking her up. With Yang Xinxin on the move, Bricklin quickly gave up, gave up his original plan, and instead negotiated the details of the acquisition with Yang Xinxin. At this time, Zhang Lexing was sent to the window by Yang Xinxin to face the wall on the grounds of obstruction, and could only stare at the blue sky and white clouds outside the window in a daze.

Yang Xinxin's efficiency was very high, and before the plane landed, he had already negotiated the specific acquisition conditions with Bricklin. VisualSystem invested $800,000 in the acquisition of Software Arts, Inc., and assumed $2.2 million in debt to Software Arts, and Dan Bricklin joined VisualSystem as a technical consultant.

Perhaps it was the successful acquisition of the software art company that made Yang Xinxin interested, and only a month later, she made another move, and this time the target was the company's competitor - the digital research institute that was not in the limelight, after throwing out $5 million in equity and cash, VisualSystem successfully won the digital research institute, and Gary Kildare joined the company's operating system division at the same time, and once again devoted himself to the development of his favorite operating system.

While VisualSystem was forging ahead in the office software market, Microsoft was in big trouble on the other side, and it had to start in the second half of 1983.

After suffering two successive failures in office software, Microsoft did not give up, but tried to find a new breakthrough. Gates held a small three-day seminar at the Red Lion Hotel in Seattle with all of Gates' generals. During these three days, everyone discussed office software and market reactions from various angles, and finally came up with a set of mature ideas. Gates set Microsoft's new development goal in office software again as spreadsheet software, and this time it must come up with an unprecedented set of software to defeat all competitors, and the name of the software "Execl" fully reflects this idea. The person in charge of the development of this software is no longer Simeone, who has served two consecutive terms, but the young Doug Crowne.

Clonde had only been out of school for only two years, and had only been involved in the Multiplan design team with Simeone, but with Gates' support, Clonde was promoted to the head of the Beyond project team. Valued by the boss, Clonde's morale was high, and he led a few young men like him to be busy day and night, sometimes burying himself in the pile of paper all day long, and sometimes "soaking" in front of the screen to pile up code.

By the beginning of March 1984, the part related to electronic watches had basically taken shape, but at this time, due to the needs of another project of Microsoft, the members of the Beyond project team were suddenly emptied. Clonde was a little dissatisfied, but fortunately, there was not much work left, even if he was alone, Execl would be able to do general debugging on the PC in half a year at most. Crowne sighed as he looked at the progress chart on the wall, it looked like he had to bring his sleeping bag tomorrow.

The next day, Crowne arrived early in the Beyond project team as usual, ready to continue the development work. Opening the IBM-PC/AT machine on his desk, while waiting for the system to start, Krone noticed that he had an extra envelope on his desk. Crowne picked up the envelope and opened it, revealing it to a source of rage. It turned out to be an internal notice, signed by Gates himself, asking the Beyond project team to temporarily abandon the current work on Execl on the PC platform and instead develop the same software for Apple's Mackintosh machine first. The news came like a bolt from the blue for the young Crowne, who seemed to lose the direction of his life all at once.

The fire in Crown's heart began to burn, and he couldn't enter the development state at all, so he simply got up and rushed out of the project team, and rushed into the office of Chairman Gates, even the secretary failed to stop him.

"Bill, you've just made a mess of things!" Cronde no longer cares about etiquette, and cries out loudly: "What am I doing day and night for?" Even if you finish pulling people out, I don't complain, I just hope that the PC version of Execl can be completed as soon as possible, but how can you do such a thing at this moment. VS and Lotus are here to beat us on the PC and Microsoft must regain everything that was lost! ”

Bill Gates patiently explains why: "Macintosh is the best graphical user interface computer out there, it represents the future of computing, and with 512KB of memory, it can fully exploit the power of Execl, which is not comparable to IBM-PCs for the time being." I think that the experience gained from Mackintosh first is precisely for the future ......."

Kronde interrupted Gates in annoyance: "No matter what you say, I will never accept such a surprise attack unless you immediately reverse your inexplicable decision." ”

But Gates's attitude was also very resolute, and when he learned that there was no room for negotiation, the young and vigorous Kronde angrily submitted his resignation letter, and no matter how Gates tried to keep him, Kronde did not let go. Still, as an ethical designer, Kronde does his best to clean up the aftermath. Fighting through the pain in his heart, Crown ported some of the programs he had written to Mackintosh, and after almost nine months of busyness, Execl was already taking shape and basically running on Mackintosh. Crowne felt he could leave, and he officially quit his job after the New Year. Before leaving, in order to continue the development of Execl smoothly, Krone also made several videos to explain the development of Execl.

Crowne is gone, waving his sleeves without taking a cloud with him, and the new programmers hired by Microsoft begin to work on the Beyond project. Unfortunately, Crowne's elaborate videotape was missing, and as a result, the new programmers couldn't pick it up, resulting in an unusually slow progress on the Beyond project, and the development of Execl was at an impasse. Gates was so anxious that he was like an ant on a hot pot, but he was helpless.

At this time, Crown did not find a job in Seattle, so he planned to try his luck in California. The leak happened to rain overnight, and Clonde, who was already a little strapped for money, fell asleep on the train to California, and by the time he woke up, he had been ransacked. Seeing that poor Kronde was about to live on the streets, fortunately he met Dr. Yu who was out on errands, and with the shyness of his pocket and Dr. Yu's sincere invitation, Kronde joined the VisualSystem company half-pushed and half-pushed, and the saint also had to eat.

At this time, Microsoft had to continue to develop Execl slowly, and when VisualSystem launched VisualOffice 1.0 in Mackintosh in March, and soon Lotus also launched a jazz suite, Gates looked at Execl, which was still a half-finished product, and could only hug and cry with Simeone again.

Welcome to the majority of book friends to come and read, the latest, fastest, and hottest serialized works are all here!