The week that I spent at Microsoft was a fantastic week, I got to meet a lot of new people and learn a lot about Microsoft as a company. This week was full of activities and tasks for us to do in groups. At the beginning of the week we were put into teams of 5, this team of 5 was the team that we were going to be working with on our final presentation. We were given the topic for our presentation and a slot at the end of each day to complete it. The topic was Leopard (Mac PCs software) verses Windows 7; we had to try and persuade Mac users to use Windows 7 on their Mac PC. In our groups we had to identify the strengths and the weakness of both Windows 7 and Leopard and then present it to an ordinance and say why Windows 7 is better than Leopard.

At the beginning of the week we were given £15,000 pounds in monopoly money, each time we got set a task by one of the speakers the group that won the task got £1,000 in monopoly money to add to their total. For the final presentation, the winning group got a bonus of £5,000. The person with the most monopoly money at the end of the week won the top prize, but the top five with the most amount of monopoly money won something. We only got to find out the prizes when they were awarded to the wining people.  The top Prize was an Xbox 360, and the runners up prizes were a webcam and an Xbox game for the other four people.

The Speakers that came in to talk to us all worked at Microsoft but in different areas. One of them was from the technical side of Microsoft; He had been working on the new surface technology. He gave us a demonstration on what it was and how it worked. This was really interesting and fun to play on. The surface technology is a computerized coffee table; it is amazing what you can do on it. You can play games, check the weather, book holidays, listen to music on you IPod or MP3 player just by putting it on the table, you can spill you pictures your onto the table from your phone and transfer them to another phone, you have to have your Bluetooth on to spill onto the surface, if you want to move you photos onto the surface and then onto another phone, both phones must have their Bluetooth on. It is an amazing piece of technology, and very fun to play on. There were speakers from all different parts of Microsoft, there was someone come in to talk to us about the new Windows 7, There was someone come in to talk about how technology is changing, and what it may be like in a few year time.

Throughout the week we also had the opportunity to look around the different buildings at Microsoft and some of the various areas in Microsoft. We went to view the surface technology, and also the server room from which all of the computers at Microsoft run. It was interesting to walk round these five amazing buildings. The buildings are all open, most of the office walls are made off glass. They all are amazing buildings, each building is for a different part of Microsoft, for instance, building one is where all the servers are kept and the more technical side of Microsoft, and building two is where the surface technology is kept.

I had a tremendous week at Microsoft. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of new friends. We all got along and had a good time. For each task apart form our final presentation group, we were constantly changing groups. This gave us all an opportunity to work with everyone that was on work experience. There were a total of 25 students on work experience, each time we were given a task we went off into groups of 5, this was the same for our final presentation.  I learnt a lot from this week. It was an unforgettable week.