XP Service Pack Does the Impossible

Peyna writes "This article over at C|net discusses the upcoming Microsoft Windows XP service pack, which will contain the normal bug fixes, but more importantly, will make XP more modular, allowing you to override their default products. I assume this means Internet Explorer and possibly some other apps as well."

Comments

It isn't anything you can't do now.

[the-banker]

This SP does NOT make Windows more modular. It simply is a convenient interface to override default applications.

You can't uninstall IE or its libraries - they still will load on startup. What you can do is associate URLs to Moz or whatever.

This can all be done now, just not very conveniently for the average user. All the SP adds is a Control Panel applet to facilitate the association changing.

Marc

Could this keep Mozilla OUT???

[dr_funk]

According to this article, XP SP1 doesn't remove the apps, it just hides them. One of the FEATURES of the middleware hiding app is that other programs need to register themselves through a new API to be the default web browser or email client or media player etc... My question is will the API documentation have the same "Anti-OpenSource" clauses that MS has grown so fond of recently??? Would this prevent Mozilla from being the default browser??

What about the EULA?

[toupsie]

While this is a welcomed change for Microsoft to open up their operating system and play nice with third party companies, what has Microsoft done with the EULA for SP1? That is the real reason not to use XP -- not because it doesn't play nice with RealAudio. The XP EULA is affront to an individual's right to cpu privacy.

Actually this may apply to Win2K SP3 too...

[frleong]

This link contains some API and registry changes that allow OEMs and other vendors to change the default programs from e-mail, JavaVM to media player within Windows.

Re:YOu are too shortsighted

[MrResistor]

you have that computer loaded with Longhorn and a dozen or so Mirya tablets, one for each meeting attendee. They can work on materials being shared on one desktop in the same room, ala a whiteboard.

No they can't, because Mira only allows one user per machine at a time. Version 2, which will likely be released in 2004, will allow... 2 users! So no, it will be impossible to do what you discribe using Mira in the forseeable future.

I won't argue that Mira could be something cool, but it is hamstrung by Microsofts absurd user licensing policies. I expect that it will be possible to do what you describe once these devices are hacked to run Linux, but Microsoft has no plans to give you that functionality any time soon.

That said, though, it would be easy enough to create similar functionality using Linux with much cheaper hardware. Those web tablets have been mentioned, which seem to run about half the price of a Mira tablet, or a laptop would also work, and there are some laptops with touchscreens.

In short, there is nothing particularly cool or innovative about Mira. MS is taking something that's simple to do with *nix/X windows and hamstrung it to fit their licensing model.

Re:VNC has been doing this, and better

[Professor J Frink]

That's odd, we don't have any problem running our hardware control machines across VNC. Ok, on a modem it isn't fun fun fun but on anything better than that it's perfectly acceptable.

And running X-ray diffractometers and SQUID magnetometers isn't exactly simple text-based stuff either (a proper unix program would be but you know what Windows programmers are like: let's make it all buttons and clicking contrary to the fact that most people just want a freaking cli interface that works and doesn't require you to pick out high resolution objects with the mouse instead of just typing in the exact angles for example).

Although we have PC-Anywhere on there as well (which may be better, I dunno) it means we can connect up to those machines from practically any type of modern platform, ie we don't have to piss about rebooting into Windows just to control a couple of windows on another box. Added to that the fact that you can sling VNC quite happily onto anything else for serving and you're set: the users don't have to learn anything new they still use the same old clients.

You can compare the bandwidth requirements and cpu requirements and blah blah blah but the fact that VNC is here, has been for years and works on any system we use (Unix, Windows, Macs, even RISC OS) makes it a sure fire winner.

Anyway, at least nobody here has been sucker enough to get XP in the first place which must be a goddamn record for this dept (I'm ignoring the pirating scum and the ripped-off copies they had within days, naturally).

Anything else is X, and I don't need to point out the sheer Joy of its network transparency now do I? (Seeing as I'm often doing graphical analysis/editing and sometimes using OpenOffice to look at people's PowerPoint presentations at home via our cable connection without using anything other than my default desktop).