Microsoft's Longhorn Faces Antitrust Scrutiny

benore writes "The Department of Justice will be reviewing Microsoft's Longhorn product as part of the company's antitrust settlement. One analyst opines that Mircosoft is appearing to soften its image to become kinder and gentler. 'They don't want people to hate them anymore. They've learned from their mistakes.' Hmmm."

Comments

Whats the point ?

[naden]

All third-party browsers e.g. Firefox and media players e.g. Quicktime ask whether you wish to make them the default when they are opened for the first time. So what is a control panel supposed to achieve ? The effort for the user is in the downloading and installing of the third-party software.

The DOJ should be instead insisting that Microsoft bundle third-party alternatives with the OS not just providing a control panel.

Re:Too late, Bill

[TheRaven64]

Windows 98 really was a huge mistake. I was happy using NT 4 when it was released. If they had released a Windows NT 4.5 with proper DirectX (not the two-versions-old, and 3D-acceleration-may-work-but-probably-won't version that NT4 had) and with a more friendly device configuration GUI it would have been far more usable than Windows 98. This was even on the MS roadmaps released before Window 95. '95 and NT4 were due to have a single successor. Eventually this emerged as 2000 (I was using it since NT 5 beta 2, and it's not a bad system). Windows ME was a travesty (why did it even need to exist? Windows 2000 was meant to be the upgrade path for '98 users. Instead it just gave game developers an excuse not to support 2K, forcing people to dual boot if they wanted to play games and do real work), and Windows XP is just a whole string of UI mistakes built on top of security holes (many of which come from the Windows 98 era).

I went to Linux, loathed it, went to FreeBSD, liked it, and finally got a Mac.