Born                            William Henry Gates III                                     October 28, 1955 (age 57) Seattle, Washington, U.S. Residence                   Medina, Washington, U.S. Nationality                   American Alma mater                 Harvard University                                     (dropped out) Occupation                 Co-founder and Chairman of Microsoft                                     Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                     CEO of Cascade Investment Chairman of Corbis Years active                1975–present Net worth                   US$ 66 billion (2012) Board member of        Berkshire Hathaway Religion                      Agnostic Spouse(s)                   Melinda Gates (1994-present) Children                      3 Parents                        William H. Gates, Sr. Mary Maxwell Gates Signature

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman ofMicrosoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Best Windows 8 accessories

Keyboard

Logitech Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard K810 

The Logitech Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard K810 is optimised for the Windows 8 system and complete with shortcut keys. At the same time, it also works with Apple’s iOS and Google's Android operating system and can pair with up to three devices simultaneously. The result is that users can seamlessly switch between devices.

Trackpad

Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650

As much as we didn’t really want this to turn into the Logitech page, the giant peripherals company has rather cleaned up in the market. We love the look of HP’s silver trackpad, shown off in the images for its HP all-in-one computers, but there are no details on how to get one for now.

Mouse

Microsoft Wedge Touch Mouse

When you use Windows 8, a lack of a touch screen is a real bind. With the Wedge though, you get touch controls. As there's no scroll wheel, you can simply drag your finger down the middle to achieve the same result. It's brilliant.

Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. The history of Microsoft began on April 4, 1975, when it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque. Its current best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Starting in 1980, Microsoft formed an important partnership with IBM that allowed them to bundle Microsoft's operating system with computers that they sold, paying Microsoft a royalty for every sale. In 1985, IBM requested that Microsoft write a new operating system for their computers called OS/2; Microsoft wrote the operating system, but also continued to sell their own alternative, which proved to be in direct competition with OS/2. Microsoft Windows eventually overshadowed OS/2 in terms of sales. When Microsoft launched several versions of Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, they had captured over 90% market share of the world's personal computers.

The company has now become largely successful. As of 2008, Microsoft has a global annual revenue of US$ 60.42 billion and nearly 90,000 employees in 105 countries. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.