It isn't quite the sort of departure that Andrew Carnegie did when he quit running his steel company to become a philanthropist, but Bill Gates is doing something similar at Microsoft.

On his final full day at Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates went on stage to reminisce with his longtime friend Steve Ballmer, and neither man could hold back tears as Ballmer handed Gates a large scrapbook as a farewell present.

Gates, who is stepping back to focus on his philanthropy, sat with CEO Ballmer in a Microsoft conference room and meandered through moments in Microsoft's history. They stopped to get in a few good digs at IBM Corp., whose first personal computers were loaded with Microsoft's DOS operating system before IBM adopted its own operating software and their relations strained.

Frankly, I see this as a good thing. After all, as long as Bill gates remains the driving force at Microsoft, there is really only a single ultimate source of the vision for the company. On the other hand, this change could spur more and better ideas from the company that now dominates the software world.

And let us have no doubt about the importance of Bill gates.

I'm sitting at a computer using a Microsoft operating system, a Microsoft office suite, and at least one peripheral that is a Microsoft product. There is literally nothing I do on this computer that does not intimately involve Microsoft products -- and that is true of most computers in the country. Not bad for a college drop-out.