Gates 1982
We've got the software, the innovative ideas and the support that add up to quality.

That was Bill Gates in 1982, just a few years after the launch of his company and just a few months after IBM introduced a personal computer with Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0. And now that Gates has stepped down from day to day activities at the company, it makes for a good time to talk a walk down memory lane.

This is Gates with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1968 when they were playing with a computer terminal at their school in Seattle. Fast forward several years and add the success of writing software for a company in New Mexico and you have the founding of Microsoft in 1975.

Ray Ozzie
Chief Software Architect, Microsoft
We have bill and I and a number of people who were there early in the industry got into it because we discovered that we loved software. It's a very pliable medium...If you can imagine it you can build it...and Bill had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish and he accomplished it and I think the legacy really is for anyone in this industry to look at what he accomplished and say if they can imagine something that's happening because of the Internet or because of some other technology change they can also change the world.

Early on, the company's vision was to have a computer on every desk and in every home and it quickly saw that dream come true.

Paul Allen
And the idea of a computer in every home on every desk is really starting to happen it's one thing to have a dream and work then with a great group of people to make it happen but then when it starts to get traction and grabs hold and you see it's going to actually happen that's an amazing feeling.

The 90s were full of fanfare for the launches of Windows 3.1, 95 and 98.

Gates - 3.1 & 95

And while the majority of computing is still point and click, there are hopes to move it beyond that.

Craig Mundie
Chief Research & Strategy Officer, Microsoft
We're really trying to change the nature of software to move it beyond the point and click model of computing to something where people will have much more natural way of interacting with the machine, we've introduced the surface computing, we've got phones and watches, cars and game consoles, I think increasingly we'll be able to talk to our computer and he'll talk back and it may even become possible of it to anticipate some of the things we want to do and do them for us.

Mundie
I think one of the impacts Bill has had on me is understanding how important it is to make some long term bets and just stay with them even when it isn't clear how they'll prevail. I remember in the early days we were doing some of the interactive television work and you know we were struggling to figure out and you know Bill said you know look if you just stay focused and continue to refine it...if we can just get it established then we'll figure out how to make some money with it.

So as Ray Ozzie, Craig Mundie, and Steve Ballmer take the helm of Microsoft the Internet will be an important part of the company's strategy, as it already has been.

Ozzie
At this moment in time I see nothing but opportunity as we're moving into a world where the Internet has taken a very big role and our vision is really is to build compelling experiences that bring together the power of the Internet with the magic of software across a world of devices.

For the IDG News Service, I'm Nick Barber reporting from Boston.