The defenestration of Bill?

AUGUST 24th—the day on which, unless the antitrust police intervene, Bill Gates plans to release the biggest new product in his company's history—is the anniversary of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD. No doubt the volcano will remain the biggest disaster commemorated that day. But Windows 95, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system, may not be quite the marketing triumph Mr Gates hopes. Microsoft coyly refrains from making predictions for the impact of Windows 95, but it is clearly placing a hefty bet. Dataquest, a Californian market-research firm, is expecting shipments of 29m copies of the program by the end of 1995. Other analysts are less enthusiastic: Computer Intelligence InfoCorp of La Jolla, California, puts the figure at 22.5m, International Data of Framingham, Massachusetts, thinks it will be 20m, and INTECO of Norwalk, Connecticut, only 14m. These guesses compare with an “installed base” of 202m PCs, more than 80% of them equipped with a Microsoft operating system.