Bill Gates' future home DUNCAN LIVINGSTON-SYGMA

Wired Living Built into a bluff fronting Lake Washington, the home Gates has been working on for more than four years has 40,000 square feet of living space and a vaulted 30-car garage. One of his favorite features: two dozen 40-in. monitors will form a flat-screen display covering an entire wall. As visitors pass into each room, wearing an electronically -coded pin, music they like will begin to play. Estimated Price Tag: $40 million

Go Car Go! When Microsoft was based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in its early years, Gates bought a Porsche 911 and used to race it in the desert; Paul Allen had to bail him out of jail after one midnight escapade. Later, he bought a Porsche 930 Turbo he called the "rocket," then a Mercedes, a Jaguar XJ6, a $60,000 Carrera Cabriolet 964, a $380,000 Porsche 959 that ended up impounded in a customs shed because it couldn't meet import emission standards, and a Ferrari 348 that became known as the "dune buggy" after he spun it into the sand.

Bill Gates checking air in a tire near Seattle, 1990 DALE WITTNER

Digital Archivist The prestigious 16 million-image Bettman Archive is just the start of Gates' growing database of photos, prints and famous artworks. As the biggest player in the photo-archiving industry, Gates' company Corbis supplies pictures to books, magazines and websites -- including the illustration at the upper left corner of this webpage.