The media watchdog magazine Brill's Content, published on Monday, features the photo of a long-haired, smiling, 21-year-old Gates as part of a story called Making Bill, on the computer giant's public relations methods.

It was provided, on request, by the Albuquerque police department in New Mexico, although officers there could not remember the reason for the arrest.

Gates' love of fast cars

Microsoft was based in Albuquerque in its early days and its move to Redmond, Washington has, in the past, been attributed to Gates' problems with his New Mexico drivers' licence after numerous traffic violations.

He is said to have been given three speeding tickets on his original drive to the new headquarters in the Pacific Northwest.

The Microsoft chairman had a Porsche 911 and used to race in the desert. The company's co-founder Paul Allen once had to bail him out of jail.

The 911 was quickly followed by a 930 Turbo, a Mercedes, a Jaguar XJ6, a Carrera Cabriolet 964, a Porsche 959 and a Ferrari 348, which he spun in the sand and was labelled the "dune buggy". His new home on Lake Washington has a 30-car garage.

Screaming down the superhighway

A Microsoft spokesman said that, to the best of Bill's recollection, the mugshot was taken for a "stop-sign violation and he didn't have his drivers' licence with him."

With his eye to the future though, the software supremo is concentrating more on the Internet than fast cars these days.

A featured quote on his page on the Microsoft Website reads: "The PC and the Internet will become as fundamental tomorrow as the automobile is today."