Bill Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The MITS Altair 8800 was released the following year. The new computer was based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. He had talked over this decision with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much their son wanted to start his own company. Gates explained his decision to leave Harvard, saying "...if things [Microsoft] hadn't worked out,
Bill Gates gladly so... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes." He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich. Gates' days are planned for him, similar to the US President's schedule, on a minute-by-minute basis. Gates has written two books: In 2013, Gates became a LinkedIn Influencer. Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" on January 31, 2016, in which he talks about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week").