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Inside Windows XP Reduced Media Edition

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the don't-hold-your-breath dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net has got it's 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. The article hints how this may be the beggining to a Windows OS without any Microsoft applications. Bye-bye Internet Explorer?"

1 of 605 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Am I the only one who's happy about this? by Decaff · · Score: 4, Informative

    What issues do people have with WMP anyway? Don't people realise that WMP and IE are not "applications" but more like "services"?

    The point is that they WERE applications. They have been transformed into services for business reasons: in order to crowd out alternative application providers. In a monopoly, that is illegal.

    There was another way things could have happened. Microsoft could worked with suppliers of applications in order to develop an API for these services that both Microsoft and other companies could have written to. That way applications could target the 'standard HTML rendering API', and use IE or Mozilla as the engine. They could target the 'standard media playing API' and choose either WMP or Real.

    Removing these portions will severely affect third-party developers. Now, a zoom player download is increased from a couple of megs to well over 20. Genius.

    As for downloads, there is nothing to stop vendors supplying multiple media players on CD/DVD ready to install in the PC. This is the way it used to be with browsers.