Bill Gates may be the world's richest man, but the technology he uses to do his job is probably not much different from yours; perhaps you couldn't afford his house, but you probably could afford his computers. He uses a Dell PC running Windows XP Pro, with the standard Bliss (rolling hills) background, he answers his email in Outlook, and drinks Coke from the can.

What's more, Gates's office furniture looks like standard issue stuff for Microsoft programmers. This is functional, but well below the levels of plushness enjoyed by senior executives even in much smaller companies. Microsoft has always been utilitarian and egalitarian, having started next door to a launderette in Albuquerque. Still, the sight of Bill's workspace must have had jaws dropping all over corporate America.

The insight into Gates's daily life came via a simple, self-penned piece, How I Work, in Fortune magazine (www.tinyurl.com/qtpxs) This revealed that Microsoft's president and chief software architect uses a Dell with three 21in LCD screens, plus a few Motion Tablet PCs and a Logitech webcam. If he could add something, it would be a digital whiteboard. "I don't have that right now, but probably I'll get a digital whiteboard in the next year," he writes.

Perhaps he's saving up.

Having two or three LCDs is apparently common inside Microsoft, and Microsoft Research's Mary Czerwinski studied the idea. She found that having more screen area makes people more productive with windows-based operating systems - typically by 10%, but it can be up to 44%. (Czerwinski's results were based on comparing 15in and 42in screens.) This could be an argument for buying a huge but expensive cinema-style display. However, a few 19in or 21in LCDs provide more space for a lot less cost. The main problem with expanding from two to three screens is often fitting them on an office desk.

As for Tablet PCs, Gates is one of the format's biggest supporters. The Tablet PC is synchronised with the desktop machine so Gates can take it to meetings, where writing on the screen is socially more acceptable than typing. It also means his meeting notes - taken using OneNote software - are digital.

When it comes to software, it's no surprise that Gates uses Microsoft products such as Outlook, OneNote, MSN Desktop Search, Live Communications Server (which provides instant messaging, and works with the Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo public IM systems), and SharePoint. The last two are part of the back-end support for Microsoft Office. Rarely used in homes and small businesses, they are common enough in large businesses that use Microsoft's server software.

SharePoint Services - a free download for Windows Server - is a collaboration system that has been described as a "wiki on steroids". The basic idea, says Microsoft, is to provide an intranet platform that enables teams to "work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information". SharePoint is the basis for the forthcoming Office Live website, the companion to Windows Live, now in beta. Rather than being an online version of Microsoft Office, you need to buy a copy of Office 2003 or later to fully exploit it.

Like most of us, Gates is at risk of "email overload". He writes: "I get about 100 emails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to that level - email comes straight to me from anyone I've ever corresponded with." The rest of the mail - probably thousands of messages a day - is sorted and summarised by assistants.

As Gates says: "We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with email, it's ensuring that you spend your time on the email that matters most." That's a problem we all face, and today's hardware and software can't do much about it. I can imagine a mailrank algorithm that could do something like Google's PageRank, and prioritise important mail. Microsoft researchers are working on Snarf (Social Network and Relationship Finder) software to help with that. Whether Google can get there first may be one thing Gates needs to think about.

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