Paul Allen was the "other half" of Microsoft and some think that his was the technical know-how that got things working. Now he has a book out and the first excerpt  in Vanity Fair shed some interesting light on Bill Gate's and Steve Ballmer's attempts to sideline him in the company. Let us just say that they don't come over as the good guys.

Here we have a brief (two minutes) extract from a longer CBS 60 Minutes' profile this Sunday, April 17 at 7 p.m. ET/PT and a claim that the book isn't an attempt at revenge on Bill Gates.

However, he is still saying that some days working with Gates was like being in hell. He also claims that Ballmer and Gates plotted to reduce his share in the company. However, given he is still left with enough stock to make him one of the richest men on the planet makes it hard to feel he was really hard done to.

The 60 Minutes' cameras were allowed into many aspects of Allen's world: his home, his office, and his varied collections that include the guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, vintage war planes and his 300-ft. yacht with its own submarine - footage of which will be featured in a Webcast at 60MinutesOvertime.com on Sunday.

There is a brief extract you can watch:

The book "Idea Man,"  is out next week, and, as Allen says,  is an attempt to set the record straight for technology history.

Meanwhile if you want an account of  the early days of the relationship between Bill Gates and Paul Allen and their co-operation in pre-Microsoft projects and in writing BASIC see Bill Gates - before he was famous in our history section.

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