More from Paul Thurrot today, as he reviews the N editions of Windows: “If you’re wondering what the XP N Editions are like, wonder no more. I got my hands on both XP Home N and XP Pro N this week and gave them both a spin. The results were pretty uneventful. I can’t recommend the XP N Editions per se, but I can report that you shouldn’t be afraid of using these products at all. They’re not crippled or broken in any way I can see.”
I really can’t see the point of these XP N Editions at all – you can easily download Windows Media Player for free from the Microsoft site if you want and – crucially (and not mentioned in the article) – XP N Editions *cost the same* as the normal XP Editions !
Apart from being a pointless “penalty” by the EU, they forgot to insist that XP N costs less than XP normal – so OEMs are *not* bundling XP N at all with PCs, making the EU look like the total buffoons they are. Strangely, WMP actually isn’t all that bad (no worse than, say, Real Player or Quicktime Player) – it’s *Internet Explorer* that’s the disaster area!
Bundling IE with Windows effectively locks out any other Windows browser from getting significant market share (even the vastly superior Firefox with a huge community campaign has only managed to get 10% market share in a year). Why didn’t the EU insist that IE was unbundled? And only one version of XP (OK, keep the dubious XP Home and XP Pro split if you must) should be available – this would stop the pricing equality fiasco we’ve got with XP N vs. XP Normal.
What MS should do is provide an “Internet Browser Installer” – this would be an app (which could be updated via Windows Update) that the user would run first (no blue “e” icon on the desktop to start with – put this app’s icon on there). It would list, say, the most popular 6 browsers and allow you to download and install the one you want (yes, they could put IE at the top and as the default if they wanted). If you choose IE, it would prompt to put the XP install CD in and install it from that initially. Can’t see MS ever agreeing to do this though.
As far as I’m concerned, no government should force MS to remove *anthing* from Windows.
First of all, you’re not making the product better for customers– which is what all this yadda-yadda is about. You are only creating an inferior product that no sane customer would buy when given the choice.
Secondly, Apple also has a monopoly in the PPC market. Why can Apple include Safari, iChat, etc, without legal actions? They’re hurting the guys at Camino and AdiumX, you know!
All these lawsuites and legal actions by the EU were a waste of everyone’s time and money. Then again, what else is new about the EU.
And yes, I live inside the EU.
Microsoft has time after time leveraged their OS monopoly to gain entry and dominate new markets.
They have been convicted of abusing their monopoly which means that they need to follow a different set of rules so that there can be competition in the market.
I’m stunned that you prefer a monopoly over competition that fosters better applications.
Capitalism is all about competition.
I’m stunned that you prefer a monopoly over competition that fosters better applications.
I do not prefer a monopoly. There is nothing stopping anyone from installing a different browser, different media player, different X, different Y.
A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such. Since I’m free to install anyting else than Windows, IE or MSN Messenger, I do not percieve MS as a monopoly.
Of course MS has some sort of a monopoly, it’s just that I do not percieve it as such. And of course MS has ‘abused’ this position. But still, I am free to install whatever I want.
“I do not prefer a monopoly. There is nothing stopping anyone from installing a different browser, different media player, different X, different Y.”
But MS is and was stopping vendors from installing different apps with their OEM version. That’s what this is all about, though you don’t seem to be aware of it.
“A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such.”
Huh? No, it’s a monopoly when it’s a monopoly…
“Since I’m free to install anyting else than Windows, IE or MSN Messenger, I do not percieve MS as a monopoly.”
Thom, did it ever occur to you that it might make a difference, if an app comes preinstalled with nearly every computer sold, as opposed to apps that the consumer himself is able to install should he wish to do so? Did it ever occur to you that it might be problematic, that contrary to your claim, vendors selling PCs with windows are not able to simply replace the MS apps with alternatives? Don’t you think that slightly skews the market place?
“Of course MS has some sort of a monopoly, it’s just that I do not percieve it as such.”
Aha??????
Huh? No, it’s a monopoly when it’s a monopoly…
Yes, according to the law. However, I *personally* do not percieve MS as a monopoly, because there are enough alternatives out there for me to try. I do not even use Windows at home! So in that sense, what hardships do I encounter due to MS having a monopoly?
Exactly: none.
And that is why I do not percieve MS as a monopoly. *You* might percieve that differently, and you are free to do so. Just that for me *personally*, MS does not have a monopoly. That is what I said in my previous post.
“I do not even use Windows at home! So in that sense, what hardships do I encounter due to MS having a monopoly?
Exactly: none.”
I suppose you use Mac OS X, for which MS has “kindly” made WMP 9 available. So you have “the freedom” to install it.
If you use linux the only “freedoms” you have are either to install illegal codecs or not to watch the majority of videos at all.
There is no such thing as “illegal codec”. Please find a more appropriate word. Continuously saying “illegal codec” makes you look hm.. let’s say ignorant…
Oh right… Then I wonder why hardly any distribution ships with w32 codecs out of the box. Surely the must all be ignorant…
Huh? No, it’s a monopoly when it’s a monopoly…
Yes, according to the law. However, I *personally* do not percieve MS as a monopoly
And so, paraphrasing, “A monopoly is only a monopoly when you perceive it as such.”
This may border on overparsing, but it is a marked change from the original argument. If the argument is about perception, then it’s your perception vs. everybody else’s perception. You can state that you do not perceive it as a monopoly and nobody can gainsay that. Who but you can tell us what you perceive? And if anyone disagrees, who is to say whether their perception is superior to yours? So it’s cogito ergo sum time… it’s “who shaves the barber” time… i.e., it’s philosophy time. An interesting intellectual exercise (maybe), but we engage in an argument without end proving nothing.
I do not even use Windows at home! So in that sense, what hardships do I encounter due to MS having a monopoly?
A fair question, and much more to the point. One that might even admit of an answer. The short answer is “it depends,” but at least one can explore scenarios and examine the consequences.
I do not even use Windows at home! So in that sense, what hardships do I encounter due to MS having a monopoly?
exactly…. you spouted off a comment without being aware of the full facts..
if you happen to install windows on a PC. and then install firefox, make fairfox the default browser and try to remove IE.
no problem so far.
and you decide not to use windows update.
still no problem so far.
Now, if you want to update MSN Messenger, it will not install unless you have an up-to-date IE installed.
what is the story with that ?
Microsoft IS forcing you to use its software !
try it
Microsoft IS forcing you to use its software !
Eaxactlly- and when you want the latest Gaim, you’ll need the latest gtk+. And when you need the latest Kopete, you’re gonna need the latest qt libs. Etc. It really ain’t much different.
But that’s besides the point
The point is, you are not forced to use MS software; buy a Mac, install Linux, buy a machine with Linux pre-installed, etc. You are only forced into using MS software when you are willing to be forced.
Eaxactlly- and when you want the latest Gaim, you’ll need the latest gtk+. And when you need the latest Kopete, you’re gonna need the latest qt libs. Etc. It really ain’t much different.
WHAT ?
I thought you had more sense than that..
there is no comparison there at all
gtk and qt are support libs
Don’t you realize why the anti-trus laws are in place? You can imagine that monopolistic practices can deprive society of technological advancements and innovations that don’t exist because of said monopoly (making a market difficult to compete in of course stiffles technological innovation… it’s a simple premise).
But MS is and was stopping vendors from installing different apps with their OEM version. That’s what this is all about, though you don’t seem to be aware of it.
This is WRONG. Microsoft offered INCENTIVES for companies not bundling other products. They did NOT force them though. They did NOT RAISE the cost of a company chose to install other software.
Even if you write it in bold still doesn’t make it true. They did raise the costs for companies that wanted to install other software and that’s what lead the EU to determine that they were abusing their monopoly.
Care to back up your statements? Everything I read in the 2001 ruling from the appeals court said different.
There is nothing stopping anyone from installing a different browser, different media player, different X, different Y.
But there is.
When you already have one, you don’t venture the voyage into looking among the possibilities and choosing for yourself.
Then you stop seing anything wrong with your webTV bing offered only for MSPlayer
As it is with different browsers – is a user already is given one, he doesn’t look around. And he, too, sees nothing wrong with IE-only sites.
Tak NetBSD for instance. whilst most linuxy distros install lots of stuff into the base install, and even OpenBSd includes httpd in the base system, when you have a clean istall of NetBSd theres only the basesystem. Ant then you go to pkgsrc directory to choose what you want.
Of course MS has some sort of a monopoly, it’s just that I do not percieve it as such. And of course MS has ‘abused’ this position. But still, I am free to install whatever I want.
Well the judicature didst percive it otherwise.
And the abuser is duly punished.
That is exactly what I was on about. Windows and any other operating system should be just a base system with a tool to fetch and install what ever program you want, off any vendor you wish to buy from. How much more secure would operating systems be if this were to happen? I personally think a lot more becuase not everyone would be using the same tools for a given task. You should always just install a very base system and build on it to your likeing. Not what someone else thing you should like.
Alie
You should always just install a very base system and build on it to your likeing. Not what someone else thing you should like.
You do know that about 90% of the population has no interest in choosing which browser they want to use from 12 options? They do not want to, nor can they– they are too computer illiterate to do so. I do not wish my government would impose that upon my grandmother.
You do know that about 90% of the population has no interest in choosing which browser they want to use from 12 options? They do not want to, nor can they– they are too computer illiterate to do so. I do not wish my government would impose that upon my grandmother.
So let Microsoft choose for her?
I hate to break the news to you, but EVERYONE goes out and gets a different media player.
Every single person I know used to go out and download WinAMP, and probably would still if it was any good.
Simply, WMP is the best audio/video player freely available for Windows.
Same was true of IE back when it started dominating the market. IE did NOT, I repeat NOT, gain its market share from being bunlded with Windows. IE was bundled with Windows from IE2 in Win95 and beyond. IE didn’t start getting any market share until IE3, when it was just about on par feature for feature with Netscape 3. IE4 came out and completely blew Netscape 4 out of the water. Before IE4, IE had about 15% market share. Once IE4 was released, and before Win98 came out, it garnered at least 50%.
Up until IE4, everyone went out and downloaded Netscape, even though Windows came with both IE2 and IE3 (original had IE2, OSR2 had IE3, OSR2.5 had IE4).
rklrkl says that somehow the “vastly superior” Firefox has only managed to gain 10% of the market in a year and as such, IE bundling must be hindering Firefox’s performance in this area. This is just outright lunacy. First, Firefox is only better in some ways, while IE is better than others. At this point, IE is a LOT more powerful as far as what you can do with the browser, it also is a MUCH better choice for corporate desktops at this point. Definately not “vastly superior”. Also, 10% in one year is not by ANY stretch of the imagination a small ammount.
Simple fact is, also, that IE cannot be removed from Windows without breaking thousands of applications out their. So many applications use, and depend on, IE to render. If you notice, too, even though that everyone claims that IE should be completely removed from Windows, the very same people also claim that Apple’s webcore and KDE’s konquerer integration is a divine inspiration. IE has been doing the EXACT same thing since 1996.
The same can now be said of WMP.
One more point. Nobody makes money off of these products to begine with. Netscape only made a very very small portion from their browser back in the day (they stayed afloat by selling their web server software). How exactly can someone get their foothold into a market that is a market completely dominated by free software that no one makes money on?
I hate to break the news to you, but EVERYONE goes out and gets a different media player.
Every single person I know used to go out and download WinAMP, and probably would still if it was any good.
Simply, WMP is the best audio/video player freely available for Windows.
So? If the streaming media was transmitted in an standardised format, than differend players can view the same media. The varaiety doesn’t stop aything.
And WMP isn’t free – it’s bundled with Windows. You have to buy Windows to use it.
Simple fact is, also, that IE cannot be removed from Windows without breaking thousands of applications out their. So many applications use, and depend on, IE to render.
No. Aplications do not rely on IE itself.
They rely on Trident.
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine) .
And IE can be safely remove because without crippling trident-reliant applications.
As to the “they stopped downloading netscape” rant – – this was the time, when competition blocking begun.
And the “Browser of choice for corporate desktop” is the effect of it. And the effect of the explore-expend-exploit-exterminate policy implemented by MS.
And now, this “standard browser”, which you so fiercely defend, is the main blocking factor for the developement of the web. No CSS2, and othe standardwize-agnosticissims by it promoted hinder the development.
. http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/4… .
Sites have to by “downgraded” to be viewed in IE.
KDE’s konquerer integration
Uhum, and Safari is Konqueror? Aha! But it still does use khtml as it’s rendering engine. And what’s more – there’s no KDE or qt in OS X, is there? So I guess Konqi’s alledged integration in not so tight after all.
No less tight than IE.
You can blame Netscape’s demise on competition blocking, but you are just kidding yourself. IE4 was BY FAR the best browser of the day. IE5 fixed IE4’s problems.
I’m not “defending” IE. I am stating the facts. The facts may hurt, but they are just that, facts. I also never said that IE was still the absolute best browser. But the fact is Firefox/Mozilla/Whatever else does not do every single thing better than IE.
The only two places that IE6 falls short in is security (and Firefox’s track record isn’t too great either) and standards compliance (even though IE used to be the most standards compliant browser out there).
I sincerely doubt that you and the people saying the same things you are were eveven around back when all this was happening. Either that or you just weren’t into computers/technology back then.
“A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such.”
Thanks humpty dumpty. A monopoly is a company which has gained a large majority of its market and uses its power to prevent entry. Microsoft could only be on 75% of computers, and if they still kept OEM’s from installing other software they’d still be a monopoly for preventing entry. The problem the EU has is what Microsoft does to its OEMs.
There is some concern over a massively inferior product (WMP9) gaining market dominance over better utilities. And the competition in media is more important today, with DRM, than it has been before.
The only part about the whole affair the bugs me is that they’ve ignored the truly horrible things and focused on WMP… Every government in the world today seems to do a half-assed job when it comes to anti-trust (or whatever Europeans call them) suits!
“A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such.”
Thanks humpty dumpty.
Not every monopoly is perceived, even.
For instance, the state has the monopoly to issue the legal tender. And yet, hardly anyone view it as a monopoly, do they?
As far as I’m concerned, no government should force MS to remove *anthing* from Windows.
I disagree entirely.
Beeing a liberal I do say that companies souldn’t be binded with very strict regulations and the goverment should set the rules, and just “let the be active” (laisses faire).
But it cant’ happen when we DO have a monompoly. It was a fact, stated by a EU judicature.
And it can’t happen when a company is renovned for it’s efforts to block competition and monopolise the market.
Therefore I welcome the regulation.
First of all, you’re not making the product better for customers–
Making cheeper goods and beeing pro-choice, allowing the customer to decide is bad, eh?
Making cheeper goods and beeing pro-choice, allowing the customer to decide is bad, eh?
So, it’s the government’s task to force choice upon people?
Anyway, there already IS choice. You can always install anything else then Windows. You can opt not to buy Office. You can install Firefox. You can buy a Mac. You can buy an Open Desktop Workstation. You can buy a LinuxCertified laptop. You can buy a Sun Ultra 20 (only €895,-). Etc. etc.
Now, the fact that those options aren’t well known among the crowd isn’t exactly MS’ fault, now is it? The fact that Apple is only pushing its iPod these days, and barely, if ever, does any ads for Macs and all that (at least here in Europe), is that MS’ fault?
Microsoft has done bad things, and like any other company in the world, will continue to do bad things. However, should MS be punished, using my taxmoney, because their competition, which is definitely there, doesn’t properly present itself to customers?
So, it’s the government’s task to force choice upon people?
Hell, no. But the government has to intervene when competivity ruler are being broken.
Anyway, there already IS choice. […] You can install Firefox.[i]
But I’d like to opt for Windows not bundled with IE, just as easily as I opt for postfix over sendmail, and sendmail can be eradicated from the system totally.
That’s choice.
Not “You have what you want AND also, of course, IE. With best wishes, yours MS”.
[i]Microsoft has done bad things, and like any other company in the world, will continue to do bad things.
Agreed. And it is the case when the government can’t stand still. The rules of free competition without being enforced would be ineffective.
But it is only the begining – isn’t the EU starting to promote Open Standards in their document formats?
You’re staff for this journal yet have no knowledge of markets or concept of barriers to entry?
I wonder what kind of “liberal” you are. The government should never involve itself in the free market. The only monopolies that can exist, are monopolies created by the government.
Microsoft has never held a gun to someones head, and required them to buy Windows or anything else from them. What Microsoft has done, is to lay better deals on the table then what other companies could afford. It’s only in this socialdemocratic world a company could be convicted as a monopoly, just because it’s selling better then others.
Please stop your communist whining. It’s not up to the government to decide who gets to be successfull in a free market.
As long as a company does not initiate force against anyone, it’s not doing anything wrong. Microsoft has a right to bundle whatever they want with their operating system. It’s up to the consumers to decide if they want it or not…
Microsoft has never held a gun to someones head, and required them to buy Windows
Not a gun per se, but Microsoft has imposed restrictions on companies that preload Windows on their machines. If these companies did not obey Microsoft’s dictate, they would not have received discounts on Windows hence they could not have offered their Windows based products at a competitive price. That means that competing vendors could not get their foot in the door.
There is no such thing as a “free market” when one company uses its monopoly power to keep other vendors from accessing the market in an effective manner.
“Microsoft has never held a gun to someones head, and required them to buy Windows or anything else from them.”
It has been proven in the law courts that Microsoft has consitantly used illegal buisness methods to establish its monopoly and to prevent other companies from competing in the markets which M$ wished to control.
Killermike
I do opt for preventing monopolies.
As far as I’m concerned, no government should force MS to remove *anthing* from Windows.
First of all, you’re not making the product better for customers– which is what all this yadda-yadda is about.
From an idealistic point of view, I agree with your first point. The actual problem is the practical reality that’s contrary to your second point – many of the software bundling choices Microsoft has made are obviously not primarily motivated by making a better product for customers.
The objective, in most cases, has apparently been to use the success of the Windows’ platform as a springboard to give Microsoft’s pet projects (Windows Media, IE, etc) an artificial advantage over their third-party equivalents.
I’m certainly not arguing in favour of the EU’s specific actions against MS – but I don’t think the concerns that lead to those actions are so easily-dismissable.
Secondly, Apple also has a monopoly in the PPC market. Why can Apple include Safari, iChat, etc, without legal actions? They’re hurting the guys at Camino and AdiumX, you know!
And while it may be terribly significant to us geeks, the fact that Macs use PPC CPUs (at least for a little longer) is not nearly enough to consider them distinct from x86 PCs from an economic / market perspective. From that remove, PPC Macs are just one part of the PC market that happens to use a one different hardware component.
I do definitely think Apple could have handled the Konfabulator and Watson incidents a bit better, though. Their actions seem to be motivated by some sort of belief that only Apple is qualified to write commercial-grade software for OS X. If they keep it up, it’ll probably become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that on one else will bother to write commercial software for OS X.
And while it may be terribly significant to us geeks, the fact that Macs use PPC CPUs (at least for a little longer) is not nearly enough to consider them distinct from x86 PCs from an economic / market perspective.
And you DO think any people other than geeks give a hotseflots about whether they use IE or Firefox? As long as http://www.freepr0n.com renders, they’re happy.
Thom, stop taking the most insignificant parts of posts you don’t agree with out of context, only then to argue against something nobody has said.
No, people probably don’t care if they are using IE or Firefox as long as it works, but people do care if there is a free market with competition, as they will eventually benefit from the existance of such a market.
And don’t forget corporate customers, who might care about what they are using and most imporatantly, what they are able to use. Remeber, the most important part of the EU ruling against MS was about forcing MS to give competitors access to protocols MS uses to interoperate between Windows and Windows servers.
“No, people probably don’t care if they are using IE or Firefox as long as it works, but people do care if there is a free market with competition, as they will eventually benefit from the existance of such a market.”
You are not talking about a free market. A free market is a market free of government intervention. The government should never intervene, unless someone is doing someting illegal. Anti-monopoly laws are made by politicians to control the market in their favour. There is nothing morally wrong with giving discounts to whomever you wish, unless you’re stepping on someones rights.
(The only rights a person or company has, are rights that don’t step on other peoples rights. There is no such ting as a right to ie. free healthcare, because then you would have to remove someone elses right to freedom , eg. not working for someone else involuntarily.)
“You are not talking about a free market.”
But I am. Contrary to what you seem to believe free market doesn’t mean totally unregulated market.
“A free market is a market free of government intervention.”
Nope, a free market is a market where different individuals and companies can compete against each other, however if you do have a monopolist who is abusing his monoply, that’s not possible anymore, hence no free market anymore.
“The government should never intervene, unless someone is doing someting illegal.”
Like abusing a monopoly?
“Anti-monopoly laws are made by politicians to control the market in their favour.”
Are they? Uhu, if you say so…
“There is nothing morally wrong with giving discounts to whomever you wish, unless you’re stepping on someones rights.”
Nobody said there was something wrong about it, so what are you talking about?
Number 1: Let’s begin with definitions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Market
Number 2: I’ve already explained that how having a monopoly is not morally wrong, so why should it be illegal?
“” …made by politicians to control the market in their favour.”
Are they? Uhu, if you say so… ”
If _I_ say so? I’m sure you to know that it’s the politicians that make the laws? And all politicians have to do what the people that got them elected wants them to do. Otherwise they’d be out of a job (in a couple of years, anyway.) What this means is that when people feel, they ain’t getting what they “deserve”, they are going to whine about someone ruining it for them. Hence the politicians have to create laws that go against common sense.
“”…giving discounts to whomever you wish, unless you’re stepping on someones rights.”
Nobody said there was something wrong about it, so what are you talking about?”
This is what Microsoft got convicted for in the US. I can angle it for Europe, if you couldn’t do that for yourself:
There is nothing morally wrong with putting whatever you want to put into your product. If you were to make a new revolutionary chair, with 5 legs, and it sold better than every other chair on the market, this would give you a monopoly on chairs. Would you think it fair, if you weren’t allowed to put the fifth leg on the chair, because you were “abusing” your monopoly?
“Number 1: Let’s begin with definitions here”
Ehm yes, exactly, how about actually reading your links?
“Number 2: I’ve already explained that how having a monopoly is not morally wrong, so why should it be illegal?”
1. No, you didn’t explain it.
2. Having a monopoly is not illegal, abusing it is.
“If _I_ say so? I’m sure you to know that it’s the politicians that make the laws? And all politicians have to do what the people that got them elected wants them to do. Otherwise they’d be out of a job (in a couple of years, anyway.) What this means is that when people feel, they ain’t getting what they “deserve”, they are going to whine about someone ruining it for them. Hence the politicians have to create laws that go against common sense.”
Wow, what an icredibly insightful and above all non-simplistic view of how governments work and laws come into existance. But wouldn’t what you say apply to all laws, to that all laws “go against common sense”, because people “are going to whine about someone ruining it for them”?
“This is what Microsoft got convicted for in the US.” Nope, it isn’t.
“There is nothing morally wrong with putting whatever you want to put into your product.”
And nobody said there was, so what’s your point?
“If you were to make a new revolutionary chair, with 5 legs, and it sold better than every other chair on the market, this would give you a monopoly on chairs. Would you think it fair, if you weren’t allowed to put the fifth leg on the chair, because you were “abusing” your monopoly?”
You really don’t get it, do you? What you describe has nothing, nothing at all to do with abusing a monopoly. Please at least try to understand the issue at hand the next time you are going to comment on something.
[i]And you DO think any people other than geeks give a hotseflots about whether they use IE or Firefox? As long as http://www.freepr0n.com renders, they’re happy.[i]
I’m not sure what that has to do with the price of rice. If you’re referring to Microsoft’s actions regarding Netscape, then I don’t think whether or not people care has much of a bearing on the legality of their actions.
More and more sites do not offer a choice between RealPlayer and WMP any longer: it is only WMP, take or leave.
A typical example is RaiClick, the Italian television broadband service. There is a link for “other players”, but till now only Totem in Debian has worked for me.
We other words if you use linux you *have* to use illegal codecs.
Unless of course you give up watching Video streaming altogether.
Sorry, I meant “with other words”. And because I am a slow typer I didn’t realize that the first post had a title very similar to mine.
I think that’s actually caused by Real’s ridiculous pricing scheme… But it sure would be nice to see more Real sites!
Well, in the past they used to give you a choice, which is less and less the case.
[quote]A typical example is RaiClick, the Italian television broadband service[/quote]
Well, the PUBLIC (financed by taxes) television – i’m italian.
The opposite example could be the UK BBC, that is developing is own open source (wavelet) video codec, Dirac. I hope to see many more PUBLIC TV choosing to research alternative ways to patented codecs&players…
Marco Radossevich
“Well, the PUBLIC (financed by taxes) television – i’m italian.”
Exactly.
As I understand it, part of Microsoft’s initial defence was that it would be impossible to sensibly remove Media Player from XP. I think one of the most significant consequences of XP N is that it proves this not to be the case.
This was NEVER EVER said. Not even of IE. Hell, you can uninstall media player from within Windows already. It was just incredibly senseless to have WMP removed.
The fact that MS claimed WMP could not be removed from XP may have been misreported, but it was information I took from some news stories on the subject. E.g.:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/24/wmpless_windows/
I apologise if such reports are in fact untrue.
>A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such. Since I’m >free to install anyting else than Windows, IE or MSN Messenger, I do not >percieve MS as a monopoly.
I’ll bite. If someone prefers Firefox to IE, there isn’t a simple way to uninstall IE from MS Windows XP. The problem, as I see it, is not that Microsoft bundles applications with their OS, but that the OS is unable to properly function without said MS applications.
Try removing Safari from OS X, it’s as simple as deleting Safari.app. Now I’m free to use Camino, Firefox, Opera, etc, without Safari being around and the OS still runs fine.
I’ll bite. If someone prefers Firefox to IE, there isn’t a simple way to uninstall IE from MS Windows XP.
My computer >>
Control Panel >>
Add or Remove Programs >>
Add/Remove Windows Components >>
Uncheck the box next to Internet Explorer >>
Press “next”
…no more internet explorer (as a web browser)
All that does is to remove the Icons not the program itself.. if you open My Computer and type a web address IE will appear. so it leaves all the IE code on hard drive… what you should want is to be able to eradicate IE altogether if thats what you want to do.
Safari is just a front end. Remove WebCore and see what happens. Although not nearly as detrimental as removing IE, but still a problem.
note: Only reason it is not so detremental is because WebCore is brand new, IE’s rendering engine has been used by the OS and 3rd party apps since 1998.
So, someone mods down my comment yet doesn’t say anything about it?
The truth hurts eh?
But isn’t an operating system just meant to talk between applications and hardware with some tools to copy/delete/move files around? An Operating system shouldn’t have media players, web browsers and such. Another thing I have noticed is why is a fresh install of XP so large (2.09 gig) i personally believe it’s too large for so little
just my 2c worth
alie
A 2gb install of XP is pretty large. Don’t know what you are doing with it. A true fresh install of just XP is only about 1-1.5gb.
Also, Windows isn’t just an OS anymore, it’s a platform.
No, at a very basic level, thats what an OS does. But there is zero reason to think that an OS maker would only make an OS that does this basic amount of work. They keep adding more to it, to make it a more desirable product. More features, more capability.
Its foolish to think MS should only make just a bare OS. No one else does, why would they be different.
I think the idea of it just being an interface between hardware and apps only works back in the days of DOS and such, where you don’t have a GUI and other things people expect to be there.
The only slight hang up with windows is the way they have tied some apps in. Apple gets it right since all their apps are two parts. Safari has Webcore, itunes and quicktime player have quicktime underneath and so forth. So you can remove the app, but not remove the function from the OS and that core is there for other apps to use. MS has only done this to some extent with IE, where their is a browser and a separate smaller part.
At anyrate, either the basic apps or a core of the app needs to be there. People don’t want to find a file on the internet and have to find a app for it. People want to install the OS, and have everything they need be there. Only having to add 3rd party stuff for very specialized stuff that everyone doesn’t use. Apple has gotten this way. Many people could have OSX and never install a 3rd party app.
Far as XPs size, 2 gig isn’t that bad, and it gives you a good amount of stuff. But even if you ripped out all the included apps, it would barely get smaller. A few hundred meg of that is language support. And another huge part is hardware support and backward compatibility. If MS ripped out all the legacy support, language, apps and such, the OS would probably be pretty small.
What should an OS include?
Todays “OS”s are more than just an interface between apps and hardware.
Should all OSs (Windows, Liux, Mac-OS etc) have text editors in them? Advanced text editors? Word Processors? Typesetting tools?
Should an OS include a calculator? A spreadsheet?
Web browser? Or do you want people to have to download their own … oh, hold on …
Support for playing audio files? A media player? Movie player?
It is a long time since a commercial OS (or “Distribution” has been only an interface between apps and hardware.
Almost all OSs available are more “distributions” that include the OS, system tools, commonly used apps and at least a few games (GAMES? in an OS? where does that fit into the “interface between app and hardware”?)
When an app is included with the distribution, it allows the user to have some functionality without having to install several other things. But it also makes it more difficult for other people to get their apps noticed/used.
OSs are used in many situations. Server, databank, desktop, Point-of-sale, machine-control, and more.
If we stick with home desktop use (XP Home’s primary audience), then most people have become used to (through MS’s tactics) having quite a few apps already available. WordPad, IE, Outlook Express, WMP etc.
I don’t think it would be a forward step to strip OSs down to just the app/hardware interface, but vendors, OEMs etc should be free to include what ever software/apps they choose (a la Linux distributions) (With permission from the app owner, of course).
In todays globally connected world, a new PC without a web browser and email client would be considered crippled.
if it was cheaper i would buy it. i have never used the wmp so why pay for it, if i dont haveto
N for nil, nada, nothing, nincumpoop, not-in-the-box, … ?
I do agree with governments imposing restricitions when companies abuse monopoly powers, but this ruling was too little and too late:
Too little because WMP is a format unto itself. There are no good alternatives to it AFAIK, so you are stuck using WMP to play WMP files.
Too late because WMP already became one of the dominant “standards” for encoding video, so you are stuck watching WMP files.
Maybe governments will learn from their mistake and intervene earlier or use more effective means of intervention (such as denying patent rights and forcing them to document the file formats).
If the EU wanted to make this effective they should have forced them to stop distributing the bundled version. This is just silly.
…and move on
Despite the rantings of some, Microsost is not the great satan. They aren’t even the worst of American mega-corporations. Yes they have a monopoly. Yes they abused that monopoly. But what is the point of this?
The point should be the consumer, period. I fail to see how removing media player helps the consumer.
“Yes they have a monopoly. Yes they abused that monopoly. But what is the point of this?”
Abuse of monopoly is illegal in most 1st world countries including the US. That’s the point. You can’t just let them get away with things. If you don’t enforce the law, the law loses its effect (even its legal effect, because people cite the cases you blatantly ignored).
“The point should be the consumer, period. I fail to see how removing media player helps the consumer.”
Remember IE? Does anyone use anything else now? Did anyone use anything else 3 years ago? Yea, about 2-5% used a different browser 3 years ago, most of them Mac users. Do you want WMP to become the completely dominant media platform?
I’m all for Microsoft shipping an OS with programs, it might make Windows worth $200 if they’d include Office. However, they have something like 94% of the market; and you simply have to watch them to make sure they aren’t doing nasty things like saying “hey, Dell, if you ship your computers with another media player you can kiss your mass license goodbye.”
Remember how IE was simply by far the best browser available and won because it was far better than anything else out there?
Remember how IE was simply by far the best browser available and won because it was far better than anything else out there?
yep, I remember. I used Spyglass at first, then Navigator, then the full Netscape package.
Netscape 3 was slow and unstable, so I downloaded IE3…
I had to actually go and DOWNLOAD IE, it was not bundled.
Same again with Netscape 4 and IE4. IE 4 whipped Netscapes ass.
It actually was bundled. Original Win95 release came with IE2, OSR2 came with IE3 (with an icon on the desktop), OSR2.5 came with IE4.
I remember it well. But it did not ‘win’ on quality. It won on being bundled with the OS.
Government rules on monopoly practices are not about quality.
(UK) The Sales of Goods Act is about quality.
Monolpoly rules are about not allowing companies to use their controlling power in one area to gain unfair dominance in another area.
IE is no longer the best browser, and it is not its quality that gives it such a massive market share.
IE isn’t the best browser to you!
IE does many things well that Firefox/Mozilla can not do even half as well, especially from a corporate standpoint.
I say again, IE has been bundled with Windows since the original Win95, yet nobody even used it until IE3 came out, and even then very few people. IE3 was also bundled with Windows. IE4 came out, and it really did win on quality. IE4 garnered a lot of market share before it was even bunlded with any version of Windows (95 OSR2.5 and 98).
Also, IE has only recently become “not the best browser” and has lost 10% of the so called “market”.
really shouldn’t insult the intelligence of people like that.. if you were to have a choice of 12 Browsers I would think there would be a description of what each product does before you download it… there is more than one office suite you could buy and if you can read on the box what the software does you can then make a decision as to what office package you would like. And anybody with a reasonable mind can decide for him/herself what he/she preferes reguardless of age.
Indeed. You could say the same thing for any piece of software. Government would not be imposing anything by encouraging a choice between programs which already exist as choices.
I havn’t mentioned anything about a government choosing for me. My point was like this if you walk in to a local electrical shop you have a choice of vcr’s, TV’s Fridges, Freezers etc. You have a choice of what features you want /don’t want in any of those applicances. The same should be for Operating systems and things that are bolted on.. if you don’t want IE, don’t have it. If your granmother or whoever is not sure, why can’t you tell her the pro’s /cons of each available browser, mediaplayer or whatever? would that be too much hardship? let her /him make the decision. nobody tells you what make of car to drive or what wall paper to have or which brand of TV to buy. It should be your choice
Alie
My point was like this if you walk in to a local electrical shop you have a choice of vcr’s, TV’s Fridges, Freezers etc. You have a choice of what features you want /don’t want in any of those applicances.
Not in any stores I’ve seen. When I buy I Phillips TV, I get a Phillips remote. I can’t choose a Samsung remote. Maybe Phillips chooses to offer different models with Picture-In-Picture or component inputs or whatever, but I only have a choice between what they choose to offer me. I can’t pick and choose elements as if it were a salad bar.
Right but my point was you just don’t have the choice of Philips, you can choose jvc, panasonic, sony, hitachi, pioneer… and i can throw away the remote and get a one-for all job if u wish
Alie
There are market limitatons .
To use the car analogy you mentioned, if I buy a new Ford, I am limited to what brand of stereo the vendor will install. And retro fitting a new one can be a hassle.
But the choice IS there, and most cars are built to interact with the “standard” car stereo design.
If Ford had 90% of the car market, this is not neccesarily a problem. If they ONLY sold their cars with Ford Car stereos then there is a case for a monopolies investigation.
(As an aside – I drive a MCC Smart, which has a custom dashboard. Most car stereos would look awful in it but the factory-fitted Grundig is moulded to fit. They did offer a limited choice, but only one model in each category: Just radio, you get Grundig Basic. Radio and CD, you get Grundig CD. 12-disk changer, Pioneer Advanced. (made up names).)
MS Windows XP N is intended to promote consumer choice and fair competition for online video formats. Let’s explain why it was unfair under the previous versions of MS Windows. Microsoft has an illegal monopoly (having a monopoly in and of itself is not illegal, but abusing your control on the market place to prevent competition from competing in the market, is illegal). The United States and the European Union both found Microsoft guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly.
Initially, Microsoft was the only one with an operating system for the x86 platform (PC architecture) and so they had a legal monopoly of the platform. but then competitors attempted to enter the marketplace such as DR DOS, BeOS, Linspire, etc. and Microsoft has bullied many OEMs to keep them from shipping the products of competitors. Early versions of MS Windows were designed to give false warning messages of potential errors if DR DOS was used instead of MS DOS (MS used classic FUD). HP was going to ship computers that would dual boot BeOS and MS Windows; Microsoft retaliated by threatening HP with higher licensing fees for HP if they carried through. Microsoft’s dominant market penetration is what allowed them to make that a meaningful threat. Microsoft recently threatened a Dutch white box retailer with legal repercussions for selling computers with a competing OS, Lindows (which has since been renamed Linspire).
Now while some may argue that you can buy a computer from Walmart’s online store with a Linux distribution, you can not walk into Walmart and buy one off the shelf, nor can you get one without an operating system, nor is the employee working in that department likely to know if the hardware of said computer is fully supported by another operatng system (and even if it were you can not get reimbursed for the unused operating system you intend to replace). Now while I may have built my own computer myself and avoided the unfair MS tax by only installing my own modified version of Ubuntu Linux, this is not a reasonable option for the average consumer.
Hopefully you now understand why Microsoft has an illegal monopoly (as it has already been deemed as such by the two largest economies in the world). Microsoft has created an operating system that is insecure by default and has many consumers afraid to download and install new applications from the internet (the only way to make it secure are with third party application addons and closing some of the ports that are unneccesarily open). This fear translates into them often trying to make do with the tools shipped with their computers. If they can already watch videos in Windows Media Player, they are not likely to try and compare it to RealPlayer or Quicktime. Eventually, online media service providers have no other choices to consider other than Windows Media Player since that is the only media player most of their customers are likely to install. This Means Real Soft’s revenue base for maintaining a competing player is drying up, and it doesn’t matter how superior a product they can create.
The same thing said about media players can also be said about web browsers, office suites and many other tools, butMS Windows XP N Edition is not intended to deal with those other issues. It is only dealing with media players.
That Is The Point!
Windows 3 beta, read BETA, gave a message saying that if you were running DR DOS some things may not run as expected. Hardly a false warning.
Also, maybe if Apple or Real made a decent video player (one that wasn’t completely bloated, and put a bunch of crap that you didn’t ask for everywhere) then people would actually use it. Just maybe.
Also, maybe if Apple or Real made a decent video player (one that wasn’t completely bloated, and put a bunch of crap that you didn’t ask for everywhere) then people would actually use it. Just maybe.
Amen to that. Quicktime is one of the few apps I’ve seen that actually puts itself back into the task tray after you have explicity removed? Why the hell would I want Quicktime running in the damn tray anyway? Horrible app, same as iTunes.
“Windows 3 beta, read BETA, gave a message saying that if you were running DR DOS some things may not run as expected. Hardly a false warning.”
Ah, but you forget to mention the internal MS memos that came out during the court case brought against them by Caldera, which MS lost btw., that showed that there were no technical reasons for these warning at all, but that MS was deliberately trying to frighten people away from using a competing product.
Nice try though…
Reguardless, it never made it into a final release and it didn’t say that the world would end if you used DR-DOS.
Bravo! I couldn´t have said it better!
DeadFish Man
Thom_Holwerda, Do I have a choice when I have to use Windows Update?
Are you saying the official Windows Update service works on any browser?
So I have a choice not to use Internet Explorer and Window Update will work?
I don’t think so. There is no choice when it comes to using things like the official Windows Update service.
Your perception of Microsoft not being a monopolistic company is as distorted as those who think Linux is suitable for the average PC Jane/Joe user. (Its clearly not there yet, it’ll take at least another 5 yrs, but eventually, it will reach that area…But at the moment, no).
The fact is, no matter what you think, Microsoft IS a monopoly. The idea of a monopoly is not a perception. Its a bunch of acts that one does such that no one else can jump in to compete against you. This is what Bill Gates prefers…No competitors. Why do you think he likes the Tablet PC market?
The tricks used by them is starting to get old. People and various Govt depts are becoming aware that being locked into formats developed by Microsoft (or any other company) is bad for all, but the developer.
One of the most recent examples is Massachusetts adopting open-standards for documents.
=> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39216391,00.h…
Naturally, Microsoft lashes out at that, saying the OpenDoc format isn’t “good enough”.
So if OpenDoc format isn’t good enough, how come it’s good enough for OpenOffice, for Boeing, for Corel, for IBM, for SUN, for the Australian Archives, etc, etc.
I must say that this is penalizing the end user more than anything else. The EU, as much respect that I have for them, are stupid. They gave their “verdict” on the case and it was to remove WMP from XP. Wel.. big whoop! As others pointed out, the end user now needs to spend time on his/her 56k,DSL,cable connection to go download it because it did not come built in with the OS. They are essentially doing a dis-service to their constituents.
A better solution would be keep WMP and add the following:
1. Bundle OpenOffice with Windows
2. Bundle Quicktime, VideoLAN Client, and Real Player with Windows
3. Bundle AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and ICQ with Windows
THEN:
1. Go to all goverment subsidized websites and remove all IE specific code (take a look at the horrible job the US has done with gov’t sponsored websites like the FEMA and USPO!)
2. Take all streaming audio content and make it a streaming podcast content (podcasts can be played in *any* media player)
3. Take all streaming video content and publish it in either a fomat other than microsoft’s WMV *or* add Real and QT to the options
4. Make all public documents readable and editable by Open Standards based technologies such as OpenOffice.
But of course, this would have been too much work, so they decided to take a shortcut and make a decision that looks like they did something important when in reality they did not. I choose to believe this because the alternative is that they were TOO STUPID to think of the solution that I thought of (and probably other users around the globe have thought of)
Why should they have to bundle your favored applications? I despise all of your listed applciations (apart from VLC) and would certainly not want them on my machine.
FYI I dont use Real, I use quicktime (my home machine is a mac) and VLC (all the time). These are by no means my favorite apps, these were just examples. There is also no need for you to install them. You can have the *option* of installing what you like when you install the OS on your machine, sort of like how you pick and choose what you want when you install a linux/bsd distro
“They’re not crippled or broken in any way I can see.”
Until it’s hooked up to the network or internet that is.
“They’re not crippled or broken in any way I can see.”
Sure, but they will be slow as hell if you don’t have the top of the line dual-core machine and at least 2 GB of RAM. Oh, and don’t forget about that spanking new graphics card with at least 256 MB video RAM which Airo etc. needs.
{They’re not crippled or broken in any way I can see.”}
{Sure, but they will be slow as hell if you don’t have the top of the line dual-core machine and at least 2 GB of RAM. Oh, and don’t forget about that spanking new graphics card with at least 256 MB video RAM which Airo etc. needs.}
OH boy !!! what planet are you from?
You are so incredibly naive that it borders on stupidity, your “arguments” are nothing but rehashes of the rehashes of “arguments” brought forward by 15 year-olds high on MS-kool-aid since the first trial about ms-anticompetetive behaviour. I suggest you grow up or at least learn to shut up, because you are really making a huge fool out of yourself.
You are so incredibly naive that it borders on stupidity, your “arguments” are nothing but rehashes of the rehashes of “arguments” brought forward by 15 year-olds high on MS-kool-aid since the first trial about ms-anticompetetive behaviour. I suggest you grow up or at least learn to shut up, because you are really making a huge fool out of yourself.
What is your problem? Didn’t I acknowledge that MS has a monopoly, and that it has abused it? All I said was that I do not percieve the monopoly of MS the same way as others do. Why does that instigate you to offend me in the way you did? You do not like it that there are people on this planet who simply don’t give a rat’s ass about what MS does? That there are people who judge products based on the actual product itself instead of looking at the company that made them?
Oh and by the way, *you* are making a fool out of yourself because you are actually the first in this thread to really step beyond the borders of politness.
What is your problem? Didn’t I acknowledge that MS has a monopoly, and that it has abused it?
1.”As far as I’m concerned, no government should force MS to remove *anthing* from Windows.”
2.”First of all, you’re not making the product better for customers– which is what all this yadda-yadda is about. You are only creating an inferior product that no sane customer would buy when given the choice.
3.”Secondly, Apple also has a monopoly in the PPC market. Why can Apple include Safari, iChat, etc, without legal actions? They’re hurting the guys at Camino and AdiumX, you know!”
4.”A monopoly is only a monopoly when it is percieved as such. Since I’m free to install anyting else than Windows, IE or MSN Messenger, I do not percieve MS as a monopoly.”
“5.Yes, according to the law. However, I *personally* do not percieve MS as a monopoly, because there are enough alternatives out there for me to try. I do not even use Windows at home! So in that sense, what hardships do I encounter due to MS having a monopoly?
Exactly: none.”
All these quotes are prime examples of what irks me about your lack of reasoning. I’m sure there are more gems if I could be bothered with wasting more time on dissasembling you. However these are more than enough to destroy you, so lets stick to them, no need to kick on someone who is already down, is there?
1. This is exactly like proclaiming that if you are big and powerfull enough laws shouldn’t apply to you. Since you are the producer you are allowed to do whatever you want with your product, and damn the consequences for everyone else, environment, competetitors, society and all.
2. You (or rather the EU) isn’t creating an inferior product, Microsoft is. Quite deliberately, I might add.
3. Apple isn’t a monopoly, never was and probably never will be. Thus it doesn’t have the weight to push it’s environment around like microsoft does.
4. As someone already pointed out, when something is a monopoly or not isn’t open to your interpretation. If you have 90% of a market and everyone else is forced to dance to your pipe you are a monopoly, no matter what Tom Holwerda might think about it.
5. What damage you as a consumer have suffered from these practices..? You suffer in that 99.99% of the windows users are too ignorant or indifferent to get a better browser. Thus lots and lots of websites and services are IE only, with activex, media files that are illegal to access with non-ms software in some countries, broken css and lacking support for a whole bunch of other things, which come back and bites you, the non-ms user, in the ass when you try to use the “platform independent” web.
In short I find your reasoning shortsighted and naive. If you feel offended by this, perhaps you should try thinking a bit beyond the reach of your nose.
You do not like it that there are people on this planet who simply don’t give a rat’s ass about what MS does? That there are people who judge products based on the actual product itself instead of looking at the company that made them?
This was one of the lamest attempts at an ripost I’ve ever seen.. Honestly, yes, I does bother me that there are people “who simply don’t give a rat’s ass” about MS transgressions, since if they had been working in any other type of business, half of the leadership had been in jail! Imagine any other business outright sabotaging their competeitors products… These people who only value the product without looking at the producer is makeing a huge mistake, or would you buy *anything* from a known criminal “in real life”?
Oh and by the way, *you* are making a fool out of yourself because you are actually the first in this thread to really step beyond the borders of politness.
I see no point in beeing polite to people who spend time defending convicted criminals and their practices in absurdum.
1. This is exactly like proclaiming that if you are big and powerfull enough laws shouldn’t apply to you. Since you are the producer you are allowed to do whatever you want with your product, and damn the consequences for everyone else, environment, competetitors, society and all.
No, it’s not. What damage is Windows doing to other people’s products? Does Linux suck more because of MS? Does OS X suck more because of Windows? Of course they don’t.
2. You (or rather the EU) isn’t creating an inferior product, Microsoft is. Quite deliberately, I might add.
*You* find Windows an inferior product. A product’s inferiorty isn’t something that’s set in stone, it isn’t a fact. It’s an opinion. Your opinion is that Windows sucks. Fine. My opinion is: Windows sucks in some areas, and doesn’t suck in others. Just like OS X. Just like [insert distro name]. Just like xyz.
3. Apple isn’t a monopoly, never was and probably never will be. Thus it doesn’t have the weight to push it’s environment around like microsoft does.
That example was a poor attempt at humour, I know.
4. As someone already pointed out, when something is a monopoly or not isn’t open to your interpretation. If you have 90% of a market and everyone else is forced to dance to your pipe you are a monopoly, no matter what Tom Holwerda might think about it.
Total bullshit. I clearly stated that MS is *indeed* a monopoly according to law; but if I *personally* do not percieve it as such, then for me it isn’t a monopoly. However, that is completely unrelated from the fact they have a monopoly according to the law. The EU tried to deal with it, but failed miserably, using my damn tax money in the process. I have every damn right to complain and voice my opinion about that, because I pay for what they do.
Secondly, nobody is forced to do anything. Like I said, but what you so handily omitted, is that everyone in the world is free to buy any computer they want. Nobody is forced into buying Windows PCs. The fact that these options aren’t well known to many, isn’t MS’ fault– it’s the fault of the companies that produce these alternatives. Have you seen any ads for the Mac lately?
Thirdly, my name is Thom, not Tom.
5. What damage you as a consumer have suffered from these practices..? You suffer in that 99.99% of the windows users are too ignorant or indifferent to get a better browser. Thus lots and lots of websites and services are IE only, with activex, media files that are illegal to access with non-ms software in some countries, broken css and lacking support for a whole bunch of other things, which come back and bites you, the non-ms user, in the ass when you try to use the “platform independent” web.
So, you are saying that MS is responsible for people making websites IE-only? That does not make any sense at all. It is the webdesigner that makes the descision to make a website IE only, it is NOT a descision made by MS. Go complain at the webdesigner’s door if you can’t access a site from Firefox. I have yet to encounter one these days, I must say.
The same goes for content. Websites want ot reach as big an audience as possible, and up untill now the best way to do that was to make sure that their websites and content were compatible with Internet Explorer. This is changing now though, as more and more admins see the importance of addressing the Firefox/Mozilla crowd.
In short I find your reasoning shortsighted and naive. If you feel offended by this, perhaps you should try thinking a bit beyond the reach of your nose.
I made it very clear that I was speaking about how *I* percieved all this. It is my god-given right to do that. The fact that you percieve all this in another manner than I do is by no means a reason to go all mental on me, sonny.
This was one of the lamest attempts at an ripost I’ve ever seen.. Honestly, yes, I does bother me that there are people “who simply don’t give a rat’s ass” about MS transgressions, since if they had been working in any other type of business, half of the leadership had been in jail! Imagine any other business outright sabotaging their competeitors products… These people who only value the product without looking at the producer is makeing a huge mistake, or would you buy *anything* from a known criminal “in real life”?
MS has been convicted for what is has done wrong. They did whatever the judge wanted from them– they made the N editions. So, what is your problem now? As far as I’m concerned, someone or something is not guilty until proven otherwise. If you believe that something is guilty until proven innocent, fine by me. Not my problem.
Secondly, they aren’t sabotaging their competitors. What you are saying is that MS sneaks into Apple’s HQ to delete pieces of code just before compilation, or something– I have no other idea about what you mean by “sabotaging their competeitors products”.
I see no point in beeing polite to people who spend time defending convicted criminals and their practices in absurdum.
I am not defending MS, I’m merely saying I do not percieve them, *personally*, as having a monopoly, because I am free to choose any other non-MS product that I want. That my line of thoght is not in accordance to your rather small paradigm apparantly immediatly classifies me as an idiot.
No, it’s not. What damage is Windows doing to other people’s products? Does Linux suck more because of MS? Does OS X suck more because of Windows? Of course they don’t.
Of course they do. If Microsoft hadn’t gone out of their way to create obstacles for users of alternative systems all the time, the alternatives would be much more comfortable to use.
*You* find Windows an inferior product. A product’s inferiorty isn’t something that’s set in stone, it isn’t a fact. It’s an opinion. Your opinion is that Windows sucks.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.. *you* were the one who used the expression “inferior product” wrt windows xp n compared to windows xp.. Not I. Keep your story straight.
[..poor attempt at humor…]
Sure. If your argument doesn’t hold water, claim it was a joke..
Total bullshit. I clearly stated that MS is *indeed* a monopoly according to law; but if I *personally* do not percieve it as such, then for me it isn’t a monopoly. However, that is completely unrelated from the fact they have a monopoly according to the law. The EU tried to deal with it, but failed miserably, using my damn tax money in the process. I have every damn right to complain and voice my opinion about that, because I pay for what they do.
Yeah, let us all just build a fire sit around it and sing a couple of songs. I’m sure that will help. In fact I’m certain it’ll do more good than your line of action, which is do just sit on your ass and hope that the market in some mysterious way gets out of the strangle-hold that has already made in unconsious, and get back in shape in record time in order to strike back the evil empire just in time for tea and cookies.
Secondly, nobody is forced to do anything. Like I said, but what you so handily omitted, is that everyone in the world is free to buy any computer they want. Nobody is forced into buying Windows PCs. The fact that these options aren’t well known to many, isn’t MS’ fault– it’s the fault of the companies that produce these alternatives. Have you seen any ads for the Mac lately?
And you have the nerve to speak about bullshit… this is so stupid and ignorant that it doesn’t even deserve a reply. Just go back and read about how microsoft dealt with oems that pondered offering dual boot with your beloved beos.
So, you are saying that MS is responsible for people making websites IE-only? That does not make any sense at all. It is the webdesigner that makes the descision to make a website IE only, it is NOT a descision made by MS. Go complain at the webdesigner’s door if you can’t access a site from Firefox. I have yet to encounter one these days, I must say.
So you mean creating a browser that 90%+ of all visitors will use, by choice, ignorance, lazyness or stupidity, that only handles code made specifically for it well, and is pretty broken on everything else isn’t microsofts fault? It doesn’t force the hand of the webdesigner at all? And having their automatic web-page generation tools, like frontpage, creating IE-specific pages of course doesn’t have anything with it do do?
I made it very clear that I was speaking about how *I* percieved all this. It is my god-given right to do that.
Then I guess it’s my god given right to say that you are full of shit, and ignorant to boot.
If you believe that something is guilty until proven innocent, fine by me
Let me just ask. Would you go into business with a convicted fraudster?
Secondly, they aren’t sabotaging their competitors. What you are saying is that MS sneaks into Apple’s HQ to delete pieces of code just before compilation, or something– I have no other idea about what you mean by “sabotaging their competeitors products”.
And this is where your ignorance and youth shines through.. Read up on dr-dos/windows 3.1, dos and lotus, opera and msn and so on and so on. Human memory is a wonderful thing, it keeps forgetting things we for some reason don’t want to remember. The fact is that ms has a loooong history of dirty tricks and anti-competetive behaviour. Are you serious when you say that this should not affect the way you judge them?
And finally *Thom*, if you’ve got nothing better to come up with than an accidental typo in your name, you should quit this discussion.
Hello Thom,
I am not a hater by any means, I would like to point out where my opinions differ from yours and my rationale (which is based on true facts) as to why they differ.
…What damage is Windows doing to other people’s products? Does Linux suck more because of MS? Does OS X suck more because of Windows? Of course they don’t.
I disagree. Microsoft’s ability to pervert standards and do as they choose with complete disregard for interoperability does damage OS X and GNU/Linux. Nothing demonstrates this better than the internet with pages built for IE only and their complete disregard for CSS compliance.
*You* find Windows an inferior product. A product’s inferiorty isn’t something that’s set in stone, it isn’t a fact. It’s an opinion. Your opinion is that Windows sucks. Fine. My opinion is: Windows sucks in some areas, and doesn’t suck in others. Just like OS X. Just like [insert distro name]. Just like xyz.
A somewhat fair statement, but security and stability are two of the most important factors for me on an OS. By design, MS Windows will never be on par with OS X, Linux, BSD, UNIX, etc. If I were into gaming I would probably have a higher opinion of MS Windows (or maybe I would just buy a playstation).
…Secondly, nobody is forced to do anything. Like I said, but what you so handily omitted, is that everyone in the world is free to buy any computer they want. Nobody is forced into buying Windows PCs. The fact that these options aren’t well known to many, isn’t MS’ fault– it’s the fault of the companies that produce these alternatives. Have you seen any ads for the Mac lately?…
It is Microsoft’s fault that many of these options aren’t known to the public. I pointed out examples of these earlier with Dr DOS, BeOS, Linspire, etc. earlier in my comment titled The Point Is (it was the 41st comment on this subject).
So, you are saying that MS is responsible for people making websites IE-only? That does not make any sense at all. It is the webdesigner that makes the descision to make a website IE only, it is NOT a descision made by MS. Go complain at the webdesigner’s door if you can’t access a site from Firefox. I have yet to encounter one these days, I must say.
The same goes for content. Websites want ot reach as big an audience as possible, and up untill now the best way to do that was to make sure that their websites and content were compatible with Internet Explorer. This is changing now though, as more and more admins see the importance of addressing the Firefox/Mozilla crowd.
Yes, I am blaming MS. It’s because of MS that I have to design two versions of every site. First I build one that complies to web standards as proposed by Berners-Lee and the W3C, and then I have to build one for IE with all their idiosyncratic extensions and its utter ignorance of standards. Because of IE’s noncompliance with standards many webdesigners that only have time to build the site once opt for the IE way and leave a page that is nonfunctional with Opera, Firefox, Safari, etc.
…The fact that you percieve all this in another manner than I do is by no means a reason to go all mental on me, sonny.
I promise I was not the anonymous individual going mental on you, but I don’t recall seeing a convincing arguement for your position. You implying that you know how to run BSD, therefore in your opinion Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly does not make sense. I work in a hospital pharmacy with many well educated individuals and most of them don’t know what BSD even is, much less how to atain a computer with it preinstalled. I realize that you said ‘Microsoft isn’t a monopoly for you’ but I do think that is very shortsighted.
I am personally a GNU Hippie, but I don’t attack the rights of other companies/individuals to use or create proprietary software. My objections to Microsoft are their frequent disregard for laws when they interfere with their dominance and the nearly complete lack of business ethics. Their punishments from the governments of the US and EU were largely inefective because of Microsofts ability to spend so much money on lawers and lobbyists. In the end, they out spent the two largest economies in the world and have been left free to do whatever they want.
I choose to run an alternative operating system on my home computer because I know it is a better product.
It is a better product since I can make it work and perform better than the 250+ ‘Micro$lappy’ clients and 20 + servers I work with on a daily basis.
Much of my time as a systems administrator in ‘Micro$lappy’-only shop is spent cleaning up ‘user’ created messes. This is even with group policies and user-level, restrictions in-place from the servers.
Our senior-level networking person still cannot even prevent that $pam from arriving through the ‘extraChange’ server to the staff and faculty’s e-mail accounts.
Other systems administrators I’ve spoken with appear to say the same thing about ‘Micro$lappy’ products. We all agree that ‘eXPerience’ service puck two is a major step in the right direction after twenty years of the M$ product line.
Any product that continuously keeps the systems administrators and other IT specialists from serving their clients
At least the EU did SOMETHING! Many of you may think that they did not go far enough but still the EU did far more than the US government was willing to…
Well, I guess Microsoft just took the “There are too many distros” argument away from the MSfanboys.
I expect to never hear that again about Linux or BSD.
Monopolys are *not* good for a capitalist market. They arent good for the consumer, they arent good for innovation in the product itself, by their definition they arent good for any sort of competition. Capitalism thrives on competition, monopoly squashes it. The *only* ones who benefit is the corporation with monopoly status.
This is why special laws are made in responsable capitalist governaments for monopolys, and any (ethical) conservative economist would agree with that. These laws are there to preserve a free market, not to squash it.
Microsofts entire corporate strategy hinges on leveraging their monopoly status to give their other products an advantage, they have control of the underlying platform, and use it as a weapon. This is illegal and unethical behavior (anti-competitive, which means anti capitalist).
Yes thats right, sales people are telling customers that if you ask for a computer without Windows, it’s illegal. So who told them to say that?, Yes it’s goes right back to Microsoft.
It’s not peoples fault that they are missinformed and have no idea of choice since they think Computer=Windows. It also seems Microsoft are spliting there version of XP into a new version with a different name and calling it choice. It’s shocking, you have choice with Windows but the only choice being a different name.
It’s not peoples fault that they are missinformed and have no idea of choice since they think Computer=Windows.
LMAO, please!! I guess it’s also not their fault that the prices of CDs are so high, even though they’re dumb asses keep willingly paying $15+ for them. Truth is, if people really wanted computers without Windows, they would have them. The market would find a way. The fact that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop is all OUR fault. It ain’t like MS STARTED with 94% of the desktop marketshare. And now we want the government to undo something that we ourselves caused to happen.
And what’s this talk about free market? According to OSS pundits, free market is defined by a market it which the only apps you have to choose from are all open source.
It’s a shame we can’t mod staff comments… opps.. did I say that out loud?
“It’s a shame we can’t mod staff comments… opps.. did I say that out loud?
”
Staff should be as impartial as possible and maybe intervene only to moderate. See ExtremeTech as one good example of that.
I’m not a fan of MS business practices and won’t deny they have a monopoly, but don’t think it’s realistic to wag a finger and say Bad, Evil Microsoft and blame it all on them.
Did MS kill browser competition because they bundled their browser? IE 1.0 sucked compared to the market-leading competitor (Netscape). IE 2.0 sucked compared to the market leading competitor (Netscape). IE 3.0 sucked compared to the market leading competitor (Netscape). IE 4.0 blew away the market leading competitor (Netscape), because by that point Communicator became bloated and IE 4.0 was implementing new ideas, however controversial. Even I caved after IE 4.0 and stopped using Netscape. And Netscape never recovered. And then IE for all intents and purposes quit advancing the browser, and we arrived in the stagnant position we’re in with browser acceptance.
And let’s not forget that Bill Gates’ original stance was that the internet and web was a non-event, it was too complex and people wouldn’t want to use it once Microsoft showed them the light with MSN. Remember how Windows used to include that icon on the desktop for MSN instead of a browser? Remeber how AOL complained that it was unfair? So despite a dominant position and their best efforts (if you could call MSN that), they didn’t kill off the internet because the net offered so much more than they could. Sometimes market forces do work. And they didn’t kill of AOL either, the net did that for much the same reason.
Did MS kill Real as a market force because of media player? At one point Real was your only real choice for streaming media, I don’t remember QT being too dominant in that space many years ago. And I hated using Real because of all the crap that they installed with their player. It pre-dated spyware, but it was still abusive in my mind. You had to really look through the options to ensure a clean install of the base player, and I seem to recall it was fairly buggy as well. I opted to use WMP because of my dislike for Real. Is that MS’ fault? No. Real was simply caught unprepared and WMP left them behind. The explosive growth of the net and Windows made it difficult for Real to catch up.
If I’m a hardware manufacturer selling PC’s and I’m getting by on thin margins, am I going to want to install extra applications at no additional cost, increasing the chance of customers calling in for support? Do I want to install Real and Netscape and then deal with customers that can’t make them work or are having compatibility issues? Sure, I can put a disclaimer that the apps aren’t supported by me, but if I value my brand name I’m not going to risk customer sat because of perceptions that I’m not supporting the product I “sold” them. I would probably figure that MS’s licensing may have sharp teeth but they will narrow my support costs and keep me competitive.
If I’m a streaming media provider, and have to look at my costs for licensing media codecs, do I want to increase my cost by supporting multiple standards for an incremental increase in potential viewership? Or will the cost-benefit analysis show me that it makes more sense to invest in the largest potential market with a single license?
I’m not saying that MS is being wronged with all of the criticism being heaped on them, and will be the first to agree that the state of desktop computing has been artificially hindered by MS business practices.
But I am saying that we can’t sit there and blame MS entirely. The vendors and the consumer market allowed this to happen. MS will not change their business practices. In fact, they’re now setting their sites on new targets like Adobe’s pdf format. And if consumers are content to use whatever they’re being provided with when they purchase their computers, then MS is fulfilling a legitimate market demand.
Consumers have choice, they’re just not willing to use it in most cases. Why use Firefox if IE works? Why use Real if WMP works? Where is the incentive? Do they understand the benefits? Or are we actually benefiting the marketplace by taking away functionality and forcing consumers to work harder and make these choices, philosophical arguments aside? Is there a killer app, a killer service or just a killer reason that is going to make them take the time to explore an alternative? That is what we need to drive change. Inertia is too strong a force in the marketplace.
And if MS was broken up, and their monopoly smashed, what then? Who’s next in line? Apple? I don’t care what the fanboys say, Apple really isn’t any better than MS, they just utterly lack the marketshare for anyone to care (except maybe the record labels who are themselves looking to break Apple’s stranglehold on the online music market). IBM? Been there, done that. Microsoft’s disappearance would create vacuum that would soon become filled by someone else operating under very similar tactics.
Or do we go back to a fragmented market with many different platforms and standards, where your choices are often a trade-off between what you can deploy and what you can’t.
Despite what the naysayers claim, OSS and open standards are probably the only way to break a stranglehold and ensure future competition (as much as you can hope to ensure in a free market, anyways). MS can usually smother competition by throwing money at resources that other companies just can’t invest in but it all depends on MS’ ability to defend their lock-in strategy. I think China will be an interesting example, their IT market is exploding and the gov’t is taking extraordinary steps to prevent MS from influencing the market, and are madating linux use in many of their own agencies. Coincidentally, because the market there is demanding it, you can easily purchase name brand desktop systems like HP or Levono with Linux pre-installed. For better or worse, lawyers don’t dictate business practice in China, the gov’t does but it shows that when the demand is there, it can be filled.
So I’m not disagreeing with the sentiments, the whole point of this rant is just to bring up the fact that it is a very complex issue without a simple clear-cut solution and you can’t simply blame MS for a market condition that everyone contributed to. Microsoft may not be capable of innovation but they do one hell of a job of fulfilling demand and that’s what put them where they are.
This business with XP N was intended as a warning shot to MS, nothing more. But I don’t think it wil change the way they do business, only make them more cautious in the way they conduct themselves. Maybe not even that, the arrogance may be too deeply ingrained by this point. Change will have to come from the market, and from solutions that drive the demand for change.
Just my $2.
I’m still waiting for the media less Linux and Mac OS versions.
I’m still waiting for the media less Linux and Mac OS versions.
I know it was meant as a joke, but just last month a friend brought an old 150 mHz AMD K6 to me to fix. She didn’t have the recovery disks, and obviously didn’t want to spend much. I figure that games and multimedia are the biggest abusers of CPU cycles so I installed Beatrix Linux. It’s based on GNOME 2.8, but has no games and no multimedia players. She can still read her email, write a paper, instant message her friends and I did breakdown and add streamtuner and xmms. I figure she can watch movies on her dvd player and play games on her playstation.
Just an interesting side note about medialess operating systems.
Holy cow… Gnome on a 150 AMD? You realize that a 150MHz K6 is about equivalent to a Pentium 75 (if one had ever shipped with MMX)….. I can’t imagine how awful that’d be with anything more than Win95.
Wow! that was one of the most insightfull and excelent comments I’ve seen in this thread! You really should polish this in to article form. I agree with your sentiments 100 percent, and hope your comment won’t fall on def ears.
Look, I hear all the Microsoft this, blah blah blah that.
But, whats the alternative. Look. I work with people every day, explaining computers. It is a tough job at times keeping up with 100 customers, each with different needs. You know what makes my job easier? Standardization. Yep. I know they all have X Y and Z because I know microsoft puts it there. And that helps me immensely. The computer business started out fragmented, with lots of contenders. When ya shopped, had to check the box. Amiga? Apple, Microsoft?
So on and so on. Whether anyone likes it or not, standards in the computing industry have gotten it where it is. Period. There are alternatives, and guess what. Those that CARE, look at them. But 95% of the world just does not give a damn. How tough do you think it would be if we all used different doc formats. Different spreadsheets. Blah blah. Microsoft is the standard, due to size. Get over it. I am glad that I know if I send someone a doc, they can open it. I would not want it any other way.
Competition is just what it is. If someone made something VASTLY superior to windows, it would replace it. End of story. Noone has, and thats a fact.
The computer business DEPENDS on this interoperability, it makes things happen. I am glad it happens, and we will leave it at that. Out of all my customers, i have NEVER ever heard “Hmmm, is there a better Media player for my computer than WMP?” Why not? It does what they need. I have never heard “Can you recommend a better browser than IE?” Why? It does what they need.
You guys can fight till your blue in the face, but those that care, have alternatives. Those that don’t care, don’t want alternatives FORCED on them.
I agree, and I would add that even in the days of ms-dos, there were many different wordprocessors, spreadsheets, databases, etc. There was a time when everybody used different doc formats, different picture formats, and so on. I’m glad that MS has forced most of the computer industry to standardize. MS isn’t a perfect company, and I would be the first to say that some of there actions in recent years have been quite good fodder for some of my own conspiracy theories, but, having said that, standards are good and Microsoft has done a good(but not perfect) job of forcing the computer industry to come of age, and to except the fact that one media player, Internet browser, one email client, etc are sufficient for most users. I don’t use wmp at all my self, but, I can understand those who aren’t interested in using alternatives.
As long as MS doesn’t prevent *me* from using alternative software than what’s provide with windows, I see no problem with them bundling software with there OS. I just won’t use it if I don’t want to, and Microsoft isn’t at this point forcing me to.
I am glad that I know if I send someone a doc, they can open it. I would not want it any other way.
That would be great, but in my experience, getting a doc made by someone using a different version (and sometimes even the same version) of Word does not result in me being able to open it, in MS Word, and being able to read it. Fortunately, every time that I have had this problem, OpenOffice was able to open the file with all of the file’s contents viewable.
Competition is just what it is. If someone made something VASTLY superior to windows, it would replace it. End of story. Noone has, and thats a fact.
That is not a fact, it is opinion. It may be a popular opinion, but it is still, just opinion. There are indeed many people who find other operating systems vastly superior to Windows.
Out of all my customers, i have NEVER ever heard “Hmmm, is there a better Media player for my computer than WMP?” Why not? It does what they need. I have never heard “Can you recommend a better browser than IE?” Why? It does what they need.
This is not my experience. My customers never ask the questions because they do not know that there are other programs. They believe that Microsoft has a monopoly, because that is what they have read. Every one of my customers who have learned about Firefox for example, have switched.
Must have been a slow news day.
I never understood why they should force MS not to include certain applications in their product. I mean it’s their product they should be able to do whatever they want with it. MS is not an economy in itself, it is not a complete market. There are alternatives you know.
If MS wants to keep scaring away developers by competing with them that’s fine, perhaps finally they will start looking at the alternatives. Perhaps they will even team up with other developers and make a linux distro together or something. Even 10% of the windows developers is a huge resource. To get that kind of commercial backup behind one of the alternative OSs would make a big impact I think.
I really have nothing against bundeling applications with an OS. It creates a good starting point for the user and it does give you more value for the money.
I thought that was one of the main problems with Be Inc for example. They had a great OS, but they should have developed some media creation applications to go with it, just some basic ones would be enough. It would have made BeOS a much stronger product. Something people actually could use, not something people would sit around for years thinking “this is a really cool OS, I hope some third party developer will come along and create a cool app for it so I can start using it.”
Talking about freedom of choice. As much as I like Ubuntu it is disturbingly hard to install applications that aren’t included in the repository(as with any linux distro). I know that there are systems that will make this easier but I wonder how long it will take before developers actually start producing such packages.
Until then, I actually have more freedom of choice easily available on Windows than on Linux.
Consumer products, it’s all about the name.
Which is why it didn’t surprise me when ‘Windows N’ was announced, following Novell’s launch of their truth that m$ doesn’t want you to know portion of their site. Novell is making open source and Linux known more throughout the world and before people can get to know the big red N, the other side has moved their figurative chess piece to counter with Windows XP N.
It’s all about the name.
Examples overheard from sheeple:
“‘X Windows’? Oh, you mean Windows XP, right?”
“That red N logo, isn’t that Windows XP N?”
You see, it’s all about the power of a name. Anyone who has any basic knowledge of advertising should know this.
Does this author knows that EU has fined Microsoft …etc… and that this version of XP is here to allow others company to propose their own products letting people free to choose what media player they want to use ?
And of course not everybody will want Windows Media Player, but some of them may want Real Player or mplayer for windows, depending of the first media file they will want to play.
In part with what you are saying the point I tried and failed to make (which was my own doing by not explaining myself) was have those apps available on the CD ala most Distro’s and install what u want after… not by default. I understand some people may feel that the OS or platform as someone else called it may look crippled but to force an install of applications for me seems to insult my intelligence. Maybe have Menu of basic install apps would be nice so u can choose what should / shouldn’t be installed.
Alie
1. ie 4 WAS better, anyone who doesnt admit that is a bit confused
2. ie 4 was the last version that actually competed on a fair level, and ie 4 was the last version of ie that wasnt a raging pile of crap
you could almost say that it stagnated when it stopped competing and started relying on bundling….
hmmm….
I disagree with the sentiment than an OS is just an interface between the applications and hardware.
Well, technically the OS itself is that interface, and all of the extras — bundled or not — are applications.
When you buy an operating system (or have one preinstalled on a new PC), it should include everything you need to get your computer to a basic level of functionality out-of-the-box. The definition of a basic level of functionality has changed a lot over the year. DOS was a simple interface between apps and hardware, and while it did have a few simple utilities bundled with it (does anyone really think you should have had to buy DOS Edit seperately, and just have text-editing functionality through edlin?).
Today, and since about 1997-98, part of that basic functionality is a Web browser. If you buy an operating system for your PC and you don’t even have the ability to go online to download drivers, software updates, or new softweare then your computer is useless. And over the past 3-4 years, the Web browser has become less of an application and more of a platform in and of itself. The Web has fundamentally changed the nature of personal computing, yet the old computer-as-a-single-desktop-unit mentally still hangs around. DHTML is the standard presentation format for online content, and while Windows could have some non-IE application and UI for connecting to Windows Update and downloading updates, it would be a pointless waste of time to do so.
If users feel no need to look for and download an alternative browser, or can’t be bothered to, then it isn’t Microsoft’s fault. I do not agree with Microsoft’s tactics in forcing vendors to not include alternative Web browsers as part of the bundled software, and that is the only area where I feel Microsoft has engaged in unfair business practices. Netscape once dominated the browser marketplace, and many people still used it when IE2 and IE3 were bundled with Windows 95. But Netscape 4 was a bloated, buggy pile of steaming crap, and that was as much to blame for the mass exodus to IE 4 as was the fact that IE 4 was bundled with Windows 95 OSR2 and later.
But it’s a non-issue today — the damage was done around the time of Windows 98. IE5 and IE6 command close to 90% of the browser market, and Microsoft is no longer allowed to force vendors to exclude alternative browsers from their installations. Users have the option of installing new browers, e-mail apps, and media players, as well as the option of setting those as defaults. If users don’t want to use IE, Outlook Express, or Media Player, then they don’t have to. But those applications should be included with the OS, as an OS without any of those apps is not really functional today. And many users either aren’t knowledgable enough, or don’t care enough, to search for alternatives and install them. An e-mail app is less of a necessity than it used to be, with the role that Webmail plays now.
I admit I would like it if I could remove Outlook Express entirely from my system — and I can with XPLite, but for some stupid reason Outlook 2003 won’t work if OE is removed. The IE rendering engine is used in many parts of the OS now, and that would need to stay even if the IE app itself were removable. I prefer Media Player 10 to Winamp or iTunes, and it is certainly better than RealPlayer. But I could use any of those if I want to, and with 100+ GB hard drives being the norm, does it really make that much difference if the files are still there?
In my mind, every OS should include, at minimum, the following applications: Web browser, audio/video media player, firewall, anti-virus, spyware/malware detection/removal, basic text editing, disk defragmentation, wireless networking, CD/DVD burning, image viewer, and basic archive file (ZIP) management. If it doesn’t include all of this, your computer isn’t functional for even basic daily tasks. Someone who is relatively new to computing and who isn’t very knowledgeable should be able to simply buy the OS — or a new computer with a bundled OS — and have a functional PC without having to download a pile of other apps. This isn’t 1990.
The XP-N edition is just plain dumb. I don’t know why anybody would actually buy it when the only difference is that it doesn’t include a free application that you can download and install on your own. And out-of-the-box, you couldn’t even play an MP3 on the system. That’s pretty basic functionality for the year 2005.