Flexbeta.net has got its take on Windows XP Reduced Media Edition, which is basically Windows XP Pro stripped of its Windows Media Player. To sum it up, there is hardly any noticable difference between XP RME and XP Pro, except for the welcome screen and Windows not recognizing their own file format.
A Look At Windows XP Reduced Media Edition
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I think the EU told em they didn’t like the name (can you blame them lol).
I am trying to think of something else to call it but drawing a blank.
Maybe they should take a page from the GNU book and name it MINRME (MINRME Is Not Reduced Media Edition)
or
TSXPBWMP (The Same eXPerience But Without the Media Player)
I’d be interesting in knowing how well alternative media codecs/players (e.g, megacodec pack, winamp, bsplayer, etc) work in an XP box without WMP installed.
You can *suppress* WMP in a standard XP install, but it still pops its ugly head up every now and then. *so annoying*
It’ll work perfect.
How about a true uninstaller for this damn Windows Media Player? While we can buy the WinXP reduced media version if we are lucky enough to stay in a country that offer it, it still require a big investment of wasted money if we have already have a valid version of Windows XP.
What a useless edition to Windows. I see no reason why a separate edition of Windows is needed for this.
Why not have a version of Windows without IE. Stupid thing was half of my reasoning for switching to Linux. Well and Windows is slow.
How about a decent article explaining the rationale for the Eu’s decision and also the rationale for it’s interference of the the re-naming of the product? Why was MS forced to drop media player for this market? A response to percieved Aanticompetive behaviour?
Nico, you hit the nail on the head. I don’t think anybody really cares if XP comes with Media Player, IE or whatever pre-installed. But being able to actually (and completely) uninstall the stuff if we don’t want it is the crux of the matter. The only reason I use IE is for Windows update. If Firefox worked with Update and IE could be completely uninstalled, IE would never touch my systems ever again.
I’m in the process of switching to Linux (the desktop versions are very close to supporting all the application functionality I want), because I CAN choose exactly what I want and don’t want on my systems, without any interference from the companies that produce it.
Tune in next week (if you’re able to) when the EU courts demand that BMW sell their cars without a car stereo as this is restricting people’s rights to choice.
This is the most pointless thing I’ve ever seen. If I don’t want to use Windows Media Player, I don’t have to – I just install iTunes or whatever else I want, I have just as much choice as without WMP already installed.
Maybe if MS had made it actually possible to remove the damn player from Add/Remove then they wouldn’t be in this situation. I fecking can’t stand it when you *cannot* uninstall Outlook Express and naffy Messenger 4.7 for love nor money!
The point is that Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. This is an undeniable fact. As a monopoly they have to abide to extra rules, to make sure that this monopoly doesn’t extend to other markets. In this case, making sure that the OS monopoly of Microsoft, doesn’t extend to an Media monopoly with windows media format. This levels the playing field for quicktime and real. The EU is making sure that the media market remains a competitive market, with quality and price as the main important factors.
We already have a fucked up OS market in the IT world. The Office and Browser market is also pretty much screwed up. The only way to compete here is to give your product away for free, and have thousands of developers working for free on it. That is just not a good healthy market.
Let’s not extend that to the media land scape..
This just shows the silliness of the whole EU effort. If i were in charge of Microsoft i wouldn’t sell my product in Europe. Let them develope their own OS…RiscOS looks good!
We already have a fucked up OS market in the IT world. The Office and Browser market is also pretty much screwed up. The only way to compete here is to give your product away for free, and have thousands of developers working for free on it
The word “compete” is still a pretty strong word here. Linux/Firefox/Openoffice isn’t really making big dents in to the market shares of MS. Say what you want, but in a normal market Firefox especially would/should have a bigger market share.
This just shows the silliness of the whole EU effort. If i were in charge of Microsoft i wouldn’t sell my product in Europe. Let them develope their own OS…RiscOS looks good!
You severely underestimate the economic power of the EU. (probably the biggest economic power in the world with the current weak state of the US economy) Within three weeks Microsoft would be bankrupt.
Don’t think I’m exaggerating here. If a bank that goes 24 hours without transactions because of a crashed system has to close its doors indefinitely, MS would surely have to close its doors within a few weeks.
Not likely to go bankrupt but certainly be in a far far worse financial position. I don’t think giving up a good 40%+ of your market is the best way to succed. Also they would lose MS Office file format monopoly and once thats gone the other 60% of the market is free to switch to whatever.
as far as i know there are almost no companies selling media players (powerdvd is the only one who i can think of).
The EU should have had Microsoft to comply to free and open standards, only that way the free market can do it’s job. Crippeling it’s software might be fun, but it’s completely pointless. Fines also don’t work on the richest man owning a monopoly, open standards is the only way to go.
Ace: the reason it you are not allow to bundle 2 different products and force the user to buy them both (if i recall correctly)
I find that Real Alternative combined with Media Player Classic meets almost all of my media file needs on a Windows box, with the exception of QuickTime files and mp3’s–for which I prefer the old reliable Winamp 2.91.
Real Alternative link:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1054136293/1
the downside is that im not sure how truely legal that the real alternative is
there is a quicktime alternative as well, but im not sure of the legality of it either
very few of the windows codec packs are compliant with the licenses of everything they are bundling i dont think
oh well
Ophidian
dont be silly microsoft has over 60 billion sitting at the bank. According to estimates they can go up to 10 years without any revenue and not go bankrupt.
With the changes they’re making and the new prodecuts they want to release, i.e. anitspyware/antivirus… All they’d have to do in the next version of windows is to let you pick from a fresh install what you want to install, from an Advanced option, doing a normal install will give you what you would normally get, but you then get the option later to uninstall parts completelly. They can also make deals with other media player/anti-virus/browser venders to place their apps on the Windows CD so you can install the other apps you want, again from the Advanced install option. They could make it a small license and gain some extra money that way also.
The one key problem with not including IE/WMP and other OS bits from the start is that developers who make expensive apps or some type of web based app/tool etc, need these bits in the OS for their apps to work. I don’t know of any examples but if you remove these things and when you go to install some program that needs something that was there in XP but isn’t there in the next version, then you’d have to install that in the end to use your program, or they’d just have to totally rewrite the programs over for the newer version.
The point is that many other companies are dependent on these OS parts to be in there, and if they aren’t anymore, it changes things dramatically. IE is a browser but it’s also more then just that, there are parts tied into the OS that do other things that I don’t even know of, and the same goes for WMP and it’s codecs and other parts etc.
Just imagine if you visit some site that’s been using some WMP specific tech and you don’t have it installed? So now you can’t view that sites fancy media presintation or whatever, this is just a loose example and I don’t have any specifics to back it up, but i’m just saying “what if”, anyways, you are then givien a server error saying you need to have WMP installed, like you’d get with say Flash/shocwave or even quicktime. Now you don’t have MS forcing you to install and use WMP but your need to view whatever that site has on it will make you install it.
Whatever the case, I beleave that slowlly MS will start to make Windows more moduler as this will fix alot of problems, and also give everyone the option of totally removing whatever they want either after or before the Install process.
But just keep in mind that somewhere down the line, someone else might force you to install something again, and it might not be MS doing it this time.
One good example i can give you is a RSS feed reader app I installed that needed the .NET Framework 1.1 installed on my system to work. It wasn’t MS forcing me to install .NET but my need or choice to install it so I could use this freeware app that made me do so in the end.
The same goes for newer ATi Control Center Drivers and whatnot.
Don’t you mean “grammar”? I’ll let it slide, since you don’t call yourself Spelling Nazi…but still…
Best part of the article: “A few names which Microsoft may be using could include: Windows XP Shi**tee Edition, Windows XP No Media Player Here Edition, Windows XP The EU Sucks Edition, and Windows XP Buy XP Pro Instead of This Since They Are Both Worth The Same Price Edition”.
… with LitePC or 98Lite. LitePC is newer, and is made for win2000/xp, and 98Lite is for win98/me. I had winme installed with 98lite, and to use it or look at it, you would think it was win95 with Netscape, Mozilla, Pegasus Mail, Irfan View, Power Archiver, NoteTab, etc. installed. Basically, I had only the windows components installed that I wanted, and a few choice freeware apps that I knew did not install spyware, take over the whole system, etc…
Anyway, goto http://www.litepc.com and all your media player/internet browser/email client pre bundling aggravations can be over. If I was to build a computer for somebody, I would surely try to get the customer to buy the litepc for $40. 98Lite was the best (win/DOS) software I EVER bought…
Regarding WinAmp 2.91: I’ve been looking for a place where it could be still downloaded from. I really need that version, as it has an interesting configuration option which they removed later.
Anyone? Please?
Google is your friend. Learn to type into it’s strange little “search box” for your answers.
Here:
http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp
Tune in next week (if you’re able to) when the EU courts demand that BMW sell their cars without a car stereo as this is restricting people’s rights to choice.
You can buy a BMW without car stereo and mount the car stereo you like the most, you couldn’t do the same with windows xp (until now)
It’s not so difficult, if you try hard maybe one day you’ll understand.
Real Alternative is for Windows. Your whole linux/GPl blaming post is senseless.
I think tis version should be named “Windows XP Reduced Monopoly Edition”… 🙂
EU should compel Microsoft to remove all unnecessary bundled components like Windows Media Player, MSN messenger, IE, antispyware, etc from Windows (and reduce its price to compensate this) to not let Microsoft predate the entire software market.
Where will you can buy this version of Windows? Only in EU-countries, in whole Europe or everywhere?
Props to this review just for thils one line:
This means I couldn’t push myself to get some satisfaction (Benny Benassi).
Anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, you need to watch the video.
Kroc Camen wrote: “This is the most pointless thing I’ve ever seen.”
If you can’t see the difference between shipping a product installed by default, and not-shipping it, you’re blind my friend.
If only once in your life you had something to do with releasing software, you had known that it makes a *BIG* difference. People just use what they find installed by default.
Smartpatrol wrote: “This just shows the silliness of the whole EU effort. If i were in charge of Microsoft i wouldn’t sell my product in Europe. Let them develope their own OS…RiscOS looks good!”
Pff… This isn’t even funny.
Luckly enough, there is something better than riscos nowadays.
“This just shows the silliness of the whole EU effort. If i were in charge of Microsoft i wouldn’t sell my product in Europe. Let them develope their own OS…RiscOS looks good!”
This would be a gift to Europe ! Microsoft technology is the worst between all american software companies.
Linus Torvalds is from Finland, Europe (many americans are ignorants in geography) and Europe would be better with linux.
I don’t know what your situation is but what ever it is, don’t make the mistake that it applies universally. For example where I live a lot of that EULA stuff doesn’t fly because click-wrap stuff isn’t considered legally binding, and even if it was a lot of it would be just a waste of bits anyway because it’s unenforceable. This because all contracts that are too one-sided or unreasonable are void. Like it or not.
It’s never too late to reduce european dependency on USA. No Microsoft in Europe? it would be the best thing possible for information technology in this continent.
Linus Torvalds is from Finland, Europe (many americans are ignorants in geography) and Europe would be better with linux.
What a load of bullshit. Linux would probably be nothing without the GNU userland and that userland was originally developed in North America. Both are now developed by people around the world.
Perhaps many are ignorant in geography but you should definitely get a clue in history.
Wrawrat,
Didn’t you get the memo? Its trendy to comdemn americans for anything you can think of – geography, language, not always using a salad fork…
“What a load of bullshit. Linux would probably be nothing without the GNU userland and that userland was originally developed in North America. Both are now developed by people around the world.”
So what? From the original post I got that not all OSes originate in America. Do you not think that if MS stopped selling to Europe that Linux would take over there and if that happened it would get more support in America ultimately knocking a big chunk off Microsofts earnings? Does that sound like bullshit to you. What would be the alternative? It’s a moot point anyway because there is no way in hell that MS would stop selling to such a big market.
So what? From the original post I got that not all OSes originate in America.
I could be nitpicky and say that Linux is just a kernel, not an OS… but forget that. Does the origin really matter? I wouldn’t care to use an OS from Africa if it was the best for suiting my needs.
Do you not think that if MS stopped selling to Europe that Linux would take over there and if that happened it would get more support in America ultimately knocking a big chunk off Microsofts earnings? Does that sound like bullshit to you.
At the moment, yes. With the current state of Linux, a withdrawal would probably hurt the EU. Too many people have a dependance on Microsoft software, from businesses to resellers. The EU council knows this and that’s probably why they didn’t banned Microsoft from doing business in Europe when they are clearly guilty of leveraging their monopoly in other markets. This will eventually change… but I believe Linux still need some work right now. Not the kernel itself, but the userland and the applications surrounding it. To me, the major DEs are already quite fine.
It’s a moot point anyway because there is no way in hell that MS would stop selling to such a big market.
In my opinion, the market to watch is the asian one. It’s already blooming but the first to make a real dent in it will be a huge winner.
“The point is that Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. This is an undeniable fact. ”
Where is the court case that actually proved that Microsoft is a monolopy? I’d like a link to back that fact up.
If you deny that Microsoft is a monopoly you either are some ms fanboy that can see them doing no wrong, or you are really dense.
Need proof, maybe you should google it; try this: http://www.albion.com/microsoft/
Where is the court case that actually proved that Microsoft is a monolopy? I’d like a link to back that fact up.
Someone else has already provided a link to the “Findings of Fact”. IMHO, the most significant part – and the part that I strongly disagree with – was the limiting of the “market” that Microsoft was found a monopoly of to “x86 Operating Systems”.
In other words, Apple weren’t considered part of the market Microsoft was a “monopoly” of – a rather glaring omission I think.
I thought windows was ok , win95 that is and then they started to bloat it , if windows wouldnt come with IE , wmp, MSN massanger , ect ect less ppl would have something against Ms , noone wants to have stuff they might not want need slamed down their throughts by deafult.
i wonder when you will be able to use windows update with another browser then Ie , prolly never .. dirty tactics by ms.
Dan: i wonder when you will be able to use windows update with another browser then Ie , prolly never .. dirty tactics by ms.
BTW… While you can’t use Windows Update with another web browser you can in fact still download updates for Windows via another URL (still at Microsoft). It’s been awhile since I’ve done it, but I assure you it’s possible. Though it still would be nice though if Windows Update would work wouldn’t it?
Anyway… That URL is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en and actually there is some stuff there that you won’t find on Windows Update. So in some ways its actually better.
This would be a gift to Europe ! Microsoft technology is the worst between all american software companies.
Worst compaired to what?
Linus Torvalds is from Finland, Europe (many americans are ignorants in geography) and Europe would be better with linux.
Right… who now lives and works in America. Well i don’t fit into your generalzation I do know where Finland is not that i couldn’t get through life not knowing European Geography.
Called Fedra Core 3 & lotsa eye candy. In fact, she seems to like it a lot.
“In other words, Apple weren’t considered part of the market Microsoft was a “monopoly” of – a rather glaring omission I think.”
Why? Apple’s marketshare is negligible. Add it to the mix and it’s not even a sliver in MS’ monopoly. Really, Smithy, it’s one thing for you to counter FUD about Windows security, but sometimes you’re entirely too defensive about MS. If people like to take shots at them, it’s because they’ve generated a lot of bad feelings over the years. You know that.
There’s nothing wrong with MS bundling extras as long as they aren’t part of the initial install. The user should be able to cleanly install/uninstall parts they don’t want after that initial sys-install. A proper cleanup utility with a hard delete and a file association diagrammer would be nice also.
Why?
Because a Mac was (and remains), for all intents and purposes, a drop-in replacement for typical tasks people use Windows for (certainly as much as any alternative OS would be. For a monopoly to exist, such an alternative can’t be available – customers basically have to be in the position of having to purchasing $MONOPOLY_PRODUCT, or going without.
Apple’s marketshare is negligible. Add it to the mix and it’s not even a sliver in MS’ monopoly.
Marketshare is not a defining factor with regards to legal monopolies.
Legal monopolies are not the same as “dictionary” monopolies (and Windows was/is even further away from being a “dictionary” monopoly).
Really, Smithy, it’s one thing for you to counter FUD about Windows security, but sometimes you’re entirely too defensive about MS. If people like to take shots at them, it’s because they’ve generated a lot of bad feelings over the years. You know that.
I do. However, I still don’t think they were a monopoly, because easily available and accessible alternatives existed. Really, there’s no logical reason why, say, Apple were excluded from the market definition and, say, BeOS or OS/2 weren’t, apart from isolating the market definition into a foregone conclusion.