An Open Letter to Bill Gates

Dear Bill Kor,

Before I get to the point of this letter, please let me congratulate you for making it to your 11th year as the Number One on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People".

Your unique talent and foresight has truly played its part well in building your business empire that spans all around the world. Today you can sleep at night with the comfort that 75% (or more) of the people in the Developed World have used Windows at least once and 100% of the people in the financial world have heard of "Microsoft".

The most admirable part of you is that you have the chance to be the Richest Man in the World by far but you turn it away by donating over USD29 billion to charity (since 2000) knowing that you love your money but there are some people in the world who need it more than you do. That is truly very admirable.

But speaking of charity, let me bring you to the reason why I'm writing this letter. You've never heard of me but my name is Tim and I'm a little small town boy from Southeast Asia trying his luck at dotcom glory.

I've been using computers all my life but I never really knew how much a licensed copy of your software costs since I always buy my computers in packages.

But when it comes to running a dotcom startup, I've come to terms with the fact that dotcoms have no money. So we buy and assemble our own PCs to save some money. One thing we never could not save money by assembling ourselves though... is Microsoft Windows.

Each copy costs AT LEAST RM300. In the past 2 weeks I have bought altogether 5 copies of Windows XP causing my family to go without food for 2 days. As you can see Bill Kor, it hurts.

Or as Eric Cartman from Southpark would say...
"You're breaking my balls"... I understand you've gone through much hard work in creating Windows for all of us to use but please allow the amateur Economist in myself present an argument to you.

Today, after all your research & development, the Marginal Cost of producing each copy of Windows is very very low to you. With Google coming in with their own spreadsheet, it won't be long before they come out with Google OS.

So it won't be so painful (and a potentially strategic move) for you to consider giving discounts especially to small little dotcoms right?

Please Bill Kor...
Please handle 'my balls' with care...

And if you still don't care about 'my balls'... please think of the other people who depend on 'my balls' (or specifically: ME)

Like my beautiful girlfriend that I call Baby... Or my pet dog Ah Bop. Ah Bop is 5 months old and has yet to really see the world.

So please Bill Kor, please don't 'break his balls' too.