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PC Makers See Little Reason to Deploy XP N
suitepotato writes "In this article, Ingrid Marson reports to CNet News that in a small survey of companies such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo, there are no real plans to deploy Microsoft's Windows XP N which was the version required by the European Union. It would seem that despite the rants of anger towards Microsoft that they were unfairly bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version. Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?"
Why is it that the most obvious solution is the one that nobody wants to even consider. Don't fine, don't go thru infinite anti-trust challanges, don't drag the vendors into it. Just nullify enforcement of Microsoft copyright and licences until the matter is worked out and watch how screaming fast Microsoft does a complete about face.
For the love of Christ! How can you say they should be forced to auction off THEIR property and that they "could", oh generous one, "even" keep the cash from the sale!? There's a difference between preventing MS from unfairly competing and actually stealing their property. Heck, forcing a sale is too authoritarian for my taste too. And though I love Linux as a home OS for the old P3, there's more reasons why Windows is such a popular business OS. I've never ever ever had my office Windows 2000 machine crash in over 2 years. And there is absolutely nothing I want Office to do that I can't make it do or program it to do. Forking Windows would just decrease compatibility, stability, and usability for us users. At the least it would decrease the rate of increase of those factors.
Even if people did prefer a player other than WMP -- why on earth would they want a version of Windows with it removed?
..., depending on exactly what you want to do).
Well, my wife a year and a half back would have. She had always used Windows "because that's what we have at work". On her home machine, she tried installing a bunch of high-quality audio and video software. Repeatedly, when she started something playing, WMP would also wake up and start playing the same thing, out of sync by several seconds. With video, you can just close one window. But this doesn't work with audio, and the result was pretty much garbage.
She asked around, did a bunch of googling, but got no satisfaction. Lots of "RTFM, 1D10T!" replies. She was getting really frustrated. As a developer for unix/linux/OSX, but not much Windows experience, I couldn't help much.
Then one day she tried my Mac Powerbook. After a couple of hours, she drove over to the local Apple store and bought one. A couple of weeks later, she donated her Windows box to me (and I occasionally turn it on to test web pages against its browsers). Her attitude now is that she has to use Windows at work, but at home she can use something that works. All the quality audio/video stuff she wants runs on her Mac.
Perhaps the best way to look at this is in comparison with older audio/video equipment. There have always been the all-in-one combo boxes that do everything, but don't do anything all that well. That's fine for your average Joe Sixpack. If you want quality, you get a mess of components and learn to wire them together. It's not as convenient but it looks and sounds a lot better. The two kinds of equipment have never much been in competition, because they're aimed at different kinds of users.
Windows is becoming the equivalent of those all-in-one boxes. Convenient for someone who doesn't demand high quality and doesn't want to spend time learning about making all the components work. But if you want quality, you buy a Mac or linux (or *BSD or Solaris or
If you're a developer, you're probably getting more and more frustrated with the growing closed nature of Windows. Every couple years, you have to shell out big bucks for the required new releases of all those libraries. And more and more you have to license your stuff through MS if you want it to work on customers' machines; you can't be truly independent. This is always the fate of developers for a closed, unified, it-all-works-together architecture. The owner of the platform controls everything that runs on it.
If you really want to develop quality consumer software, though, you're mostly looking at OSX or linux (or both). Those platforms are still friendly to independent developers. You can market your stuff over the Net, so Microsoft's control of retail outlets isn't important any more. You have to learn how to get along with other software that isn't controlled by a central authority. You need to write documentation, because your users are mostly literate and expect you to teach them all about your stuff.
But face it; if you want to develop quality software, and make some money selling it, MS Windows isn't the platform you want. In particular, if you're writing audio or video software, you don't want to be competing with WMP. This discussion may be considered a long, rambling explanation why.
(I have a number of friends who have been writing audio and/or video software for Windows for some years. They are all starting to show serious signs of depression, as they try to put off admitting that their independent careers are ending.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Why?
It is interesting that when the govt decides on something like DeCSS there is a lot of complainign about how the legal system doesn't "get it" or that corruption is to deep in the process.
However, when a case goes against Microsoft suddenly we are supposed to accept that the legal system is now a perfect arbiter?
Only in hypocracy world is this a reasonable set of opinions to hold.
You think MS is guilty? Fine, argue it on it's merits but the constant refrain of "because the govt said so!" is a pointless appeal to an authority most peopel spend their time attacking.
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