EDMOND, Wash. - Just ten days after a federal judge ruled that Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, Vice President Al Gore yesterday went trolling for votes on the home turf of the software giant.
It proved to be one of his more awkward moments on the campaign trail.
The audience of about 400 Microsoft employees had been warned not to grill Gore about the case, but one person after another bombarded the vice president with angry questions. Many seemed especially put out that Clinton administration lawyers seemed so delighted with the federal judge's ruling against the world's largest software firm.
''I saw Janet Reno wring her hands with glee,'' one Microsoft employee told Gore, referring to the US attorney general. ''I was pretty mad and angry.''
Gore finally threw up his hands and said: ''I cannot talk about the antitrust case. OK? It's a problem we can get into theoretically but believe me it is awkward to talk in a theoretical level about a real case.''
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the government's case, was attending a trade show in Las Vegas and was not at the meeting. But the session was attended by many of those affected by the case, including programmers who designed the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser that are central to the government's case. One questioner said he had worked at Microsoft since he was 14 years old. The employees were told not to give their names to the press.
While Gore anticipated a potentially hostile audience, he went ahead with the long-planned visit because he is placing so much importance on high-tech issues - and contributions from high-tech workers - in his campaign. Gore presents himself as the most technologically adept person ever to seek the presidency, a claim that temporarily backfired when he became the butt of jokes for saying he helped invent the Internet.
Microsoft, which has had similar forums with five other presidential candidates, initially insisted that the meeting be closed as usual. But Gore thought that would look bad and pressured the company to allow the press.
While Gore said that the Justice Department pursued the case on its own, he acknowledged at a later press conference that the White House might get involved at some point if there is a deal to settle the case.
So Gore did his best to present himself as a sort of kindred spirit to the employees who gathered for the meeting of Microsoft's political action committee. He displayed his technological literacy on topics ranging from ''Moore's law'' about microprocessor speed to the use of the ''control-alt-delete'' keys, which are used to reboot a computer - often when a Microsoft program refuses to cooperate.
But the questioners kept returning to the antitrust case. One Microsoft employee asked Gore whether it was fair for the government to subpoena a person's e-mail and ''then some smart lawyers can cut and paste'' it to prove a case.
''I've seen that movie, too,'' Gore said. He then explained that a federal archive law prevents him from deleting any of his voluminous e-mail.
''In the White House, all e-mail - you can't even delete it,'' Gore said. ''So I'm very sympathetic.''
Gore seemed in geek heaven during the rest of his tour of Microsoft, visiting a gadget-filled Home of the Future and then touring the office of Slate, an on-line publication that employed his daughter, Karenna, for a year.
While visiting Slate, Gore sat down before a computer to compose a column for the magazine about his day at Microsoft. But after 15 minutes, Gore had written only two paragraphs and promised to e-mail the rest to editor Michael Kinsley. Then Gore headed out of the building, where he was greeted by 300 more employees. He shook dozens of hands and asked, good-naturedly: ''Everybody got stock options?''
