Mindful of the past and optimistic about the future, Bill Gates opened the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas this year with an overview of Microsoft's efforts to deal with some of today's most-pressing IT problems. In his Nov. 16 speech, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect talked about anti-spam, security, and search software, and then something new: seamless computing. It was Gates' twentieth consecutive year at Comdex--a milestone he recognized by displaying a slide from 1983 that appeared, as it did back then, backwards. At the time, Gates' father ran the slide projector for his son's presentation. "Now, when we look at what's limiting us, my belief is that the constraints we have to get rid of now, the seams that hold us back, are of a different nature than in the previous two decades," Gates said last week. "The constraints now are much more about pure software challenges." One day after his keynote, Gates talked with InformationWeek senior editor-at-large John Foley about the issues facing Microsoft and its customers. Following is a transcript of the interview.

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