For the current Zhang Lexing, the game studio can really only think about it, and now the entire VisualSystem company is paying attention to the upcoming new version of the spreadsheet software, this software can be said to have poured more than a year of hard work into everyone, Zhang Lexing began to conceive before coming to the United States, and the unsuccessful release of the software will be directly related to whether the company can continue to develop, so although Zhang Lexing has aroused the interest in game production, now it can only be temporarily put in the bottom of his heart.

The spreadsheet development team on the PC platform of VisualSystem was established shortly after the launch of the Kylin 1.0 operating system, and the leader is the company's veteran Kevin, in fact, this set of software has been basically completed as early as the end of June, and the main work in the later stage is software debugging. In order to encourage everyone to work hard, Zhang Lexing also invested in the development team from time to time to improve the life, when the time came to the end of October, the new version of the VisualSystem spreadsheet software was also ready to go.

Microsoft, for its part, has not been idle, and they have made a move on spreadsheet software even earlier. Microsoft suffered a Waterloo on the operating system last year, Gates has been haunted by this matter, but unfortunately the situation is stronger than people, and several improved versions of the DOS operating system have been launched one by one, but fortunately, the company's sales in high-level languages are not bad, otherwise the company's cash reserves would have bottomed out. In this case, Gates had no better way but to temporarily give up the competition for the operating system market, and Microsoft's main energy began to invest in the development of new markets.

Electronic watch software was originally popular from the Apple II, as a new favorite of business users PC is indispensable, but unfortunately except for a bunch of VisualForm counterfeits there is no better new product out, many PC users enjoy faster machines but can not experience faster software computing speed. Microsoft was keenly aware of this situation and decided to focus on spreadsheet software as its first developmental goal.

Spreadsheet software belongs to application software, but Microsoft only knows the programming language, the operating system is a little bit of knowledge, and the development experience of application software can be said to know very little, and it is almost impossible for those people under Gates to quickly make a decent spreadsheet software, and at this time, a former Xerox employee Charles Simeone jumped over and brought much-needed application software development experience to Microsoft. So it was no surprise that Simeone became a project manager for the spreadsheet project at Microsoft.

Since the launch of VisiCalc, the spreadsheet software has begun to form some unspoken rules in the industry, such as using A1, A2, B1, B2 to represent the grid, but Gates does not like it very much, he thinks that since Microsoft wants to make a new spreadsheet software, it must have innovative ideas, and soon Gates proposed a representation method that he thinks is very intuitive.

"Simeone, our spreadsheet should use symbols like L1C1 and L2C2 to represent the grids. L (Line) is the line number, C (Columns) is the column number, so L1C1 is not the first column of the first row, you see how intuitive it is, it is much better than Bricklin's incomprehensible A1B1. Gates explained his idea and asked the development team to do what he said.

"But a lot of software uses the ...... A1B1," Simone tried to explain that standards are important and can't be changed in a hurry.

"It's okay, our Microsoft company's choice will definitely become the new standard!" Simeone was interrupted by Gates before he could finish his sentence, and in his opinion, the standard should be set by Microsoft, and someone else's is a bird.

"But......" Simeone tried to make another effort, but was interrupted again.

"There's nothing to do, you just have to do it." Gates' face became serious, "Also, our spreadsheet software needs to be installed on every microcomputer, so it must be able to run on various popular operating systems, and of course, in order to reduce the workload of porting, it can be developed in C." ”

"So should we develop one under the Kylin system as well?" Employee A, who didn't open his eyes, interjected.

Gates's face suddenly darkened, and he yelled at the hapless employee A: "Don't mention this damn name, you get out of here!" ”

Poor employee A fled the door, and Gates glanced at everyone in the development team, and everything was in harmony under his angry gaze. Soon the spreadsheet development team began to work according to Gates's vision, but it was not long before new problems arose between the development team and IBM.

At the beginning, Gates has always been worried about IBM's imminent replacement, but who made IBM so big, if the small Microsoft wants to challenge IBM, it is like an ant fighting an elephant, and a large part of its own high-level language sales have to count on IBM's orders, so even if it is slammed by IBM, it can only knock out teeth and swallow blood. This time it's the same again, Simeone has conceived a lot of new features for this spreadsheet software, but many of them have higher memory requirements, and ordinary *KB memory can't be satisfied, but IBM recently plans to promote *KB memory machines, so it has repeatedly sent personnel to limit the spreadsheet software to *K memory. Simeone also fought for the sake of not affecting the software function, and even said that Gates would be used to support him, but he didn't expect that IBM's pressure was so great, and his resistance was crushed in an instant, so he could only obediently modify the software according to IBM's requirements, and as a result, some functions with high memory requirements had to shrink.

Fortunately, these are just small obstacles on the development road, relying on the efforts of everyone, the development team finally completed successfully, the complacent Gates named this spreadsheet software Multiplan, Multi is "multiple" and plan is "planning", Gates believes that this name can well reflect the functional characteristics of this spreadsheet software - multi-window, multi-table. In mid-August, Multiplan on Apple II was first released, followed by the CP/M version of Multiplan, and in mid-October, Multiplan running on Microsoft's own operating system MS-DOS was also released, this version of Multiplan also pinned on the focus of Gates's plan, he hoped that Multiplan would attract more people to use MS-DOS after it became popular. Maybe your own operating system will have a chance to turn over.

In early November, the fall Comdex exhibition kicked off in Las Vegas, and in order to promote their spreadsheet software, Gates and Simeone brought Multiplan to set up a booth at the show. Gates proudly announced to the passers-by: "This is the second generation of spreadsheets, a new generation of spreadsheets, powerful, easy to use, anyone who can use a calculator can quickly grasp Multiplan." ”

After listening to Gates's propaganda, many interested visitors soon gathered around, Simeone turned on a computer and began to demonstrate the use of the software, but within ten minutes, he found that the people around him were becoming more and more scarce, and the original double-digit crowd of onlookers was only in single digits.

Seeing that the last few people were about to leave, Gates couldn't sit still, and quickly grabbed a person and asked, "Dude, where are you going in such a hurry?" ”

"There are two companies playing against each other over there, it's so lively, don't drag me!" The person who was pulled dropped a word, broke free from Gates's clutches and ran.

"Simeone, go and see, what the hell is going on?" Gates thought it was strange and decided to send someone to investigate.

Simeone, who had been ordered, hurriedly chased after the flow of people, and after walking for a while, he found that there were more and more people in front of him, and finally squeezed through, and found that there were two adjacent stalls inside, and the crowd was very lively. One is VisualSystem, which has robbed Microsoft of the operating system, and the other is a relatively unfamiliar Lotus software. The propaganda of the two companies is different, and the banner put out by the company called Lotus is "Lotus1-2-3, there are a lot of spreadsheets, databases, and business drawings, Lotus is in hand, nothing else!" And the sign put up by VisualSystem is "Professional spreadsheet - VisualSheet, the fastest calculation speed, a variety of statistical graphs, your best choice!" ”

Simeone doesn't care about these empty words, and professionals like him only focus on the functionality and performance of the software itself. Simeone went to the two booths to get the promotional materials, and then pretended to be a visitor to the demonstration machine to actually experience it, but he didn't expect that the more he looked at it, the more chilled he became, the more he worked hard, the cooler he became, and finally left the booths of the two houses in despair. Along the way, Simone only felt like he was stepping on cotton, and only one sentence kept echoing in his head - "It's over!" ”

Finally moved back to his stall, Simeone sat down on the chair, and the whole person seemed to have lost all his strength and went limp. Seeing that the love of his subordinates would become like this, Gates also panicked and hurriedly asked someone to bring water.

After a few sips of water, Simeone slowly recovered, he grabbed Gates' hand and said painfully: "Both companies over there make spreadsheets, our Multiplan and those two new software are simply not the same, even if we modify it immediately, it is too late for us to change it immediately, Multiplan is gone." ”

"How can this be, our Multiplan is not as good as them!" Gates yelled unwillingly.

Simeone shook his head and said weakly: "It's useless, their software is not only more powerful than ours, but more importantly, they didn't even consider IBM's damn *KB limit, they designed it according to 256KB of memory, and this alone has already sentenced us to death, and we went out of the way from the beginning." ”

……

The subsequent market feedback confirmed Simone's suspicions, and over the next few days of the show, both VisualSystem and Lotus had won more than a million dollars in orders, while poor Multiplan had received less than 30 orders. After the exhibition, VisualSheet and Lotus1-2-3 continued to work hard to sweep away the predecessors who had dominated the spreadsheet market, and Multiplan, as a latecomer, had no place to go at all. Soon, the spreadsheet software market in North America was divided between VisualSheet and Lotus 1-2-3, and poor Multiplan would have died in the year it went public, had it not been for an unexpected overseas order. Gates, who was frustrated again, couldn't help but hug Simone and cry, and his heart lamented: "Why am I so unlucky!" ”

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