Slim's New World

Mexican mogul Carlos Slim Helu is clueless when it comes to computers. His children gave him a laptop for Christmas, but he can barely boot it up. You won't catch this captain of industry surfing the Net, either. But for all his technological ineptitude, the 60-year-old billionaire has a clear vision of how computers and the Internet are transforming the way the world does business.

Slim is already at the vanguard of that revolution in Mexico, where he runs the leading Internet service provider and has become a major computer seller. Since taking control of Prodigy Inc. in mid-1997, he has turned it into the No. 3 ISP in the U.S. Now, he's making another high-stakes move into the hypercompetitive American market. On Feb. 1, Grupo Sanborns, one of Slim's subsidiaries, kicked off a tender offer to acquire all the outstanding shares of CompUSA Inc., the largest computer store chain in the U.S., for nearly $800 million. Microsoft Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. are expected to come in as minority investors. "Technology is going to transform people's lives and society everywhere in the world," says Slim. "My main task is to understand what's going on and try to see where we can fit in."