One can just imagine the moment the proverbial light bulb over Bill Gates’s head clicked on as he figured out that modern men’s desire for speed is insatiable. Once we buy our computer and take it home, the processing speed of the good old Pentium will remain the same until the next purchase. Meantime, during the current period of ownership, say, 5 years, our longing for the beige workhorse to run faster never stops—that’s where Microsoft comes in.

“Speed” in the context of computer usage is not only a measurement of hardware runtime, it's also a psychological condition. If Microsoft can convince us that the new software it’s about to release will “turbocharge” our “gears”, many of us will open our wallets faster than we can pronounce “Whidbey”, “Orcas”, “Longhorn”, “Yukon”…

“Speed Has No Limit” might as well be Microsoft’s corporate motto, or, to put it succinctly, winning strategy.

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