Video: Bill Gates shares his thoughts on Windows 8, WP8 and Surface

When it comes to Microsoft news these days, the big names that we tend to hear include Steve Ballmer, Steven Sinofsky, Joe Belfiore, Frank X Shaw and others. But while the biggest Microsoft name of all - Bill Gates - is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Microsoft these days, thanks largely to his extraordinary philanthropic work around the globe, the man himself remains its chairman, and therefore continues to keep a very close eye on the company that he co-founded in 1975.

This week, Gates took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to talk to Microsoft's Steve Clayton to discuss some of the products that Microsoft is about to launch, including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Surface (and yes, Bill confirms that he owns a Surface RT, with black Touch Cover!).

The full video is at the bottom of this article, but here are a few highlights if you can't watch the video right now:

[Windows 8] is a great upgrade for normal Windows usage, but that idea of a Store, the rich user interface... it's a big step, it's key to where personal computing is going."

We're sharing between Windows 8 Phone [sic] and Windows 8, sharing the user interface, sharing some of those development tools, and over time, we'll just get to do more and more of that, so it's involving, literally, to be a single platform."

This is a big milestone for all Microsoft products in terms of connecting to cloud services... Windows 8, Windows 8 Phone [sic], and the new version of Office that's coming out, they all go get their storage, go get your personalization, and so that's a wonderful thing, and it works - you just sit there going 'Wow!'"