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?"

Comments

People don't care what media player they're using

[m50d]

Most people don't care if they're using quicktime, realplayer, windows media player etc. They probably won't even notice the difference. But if there wasn't the choice, then they would notice, because the media player available would suck if it had no competition to drive it on. People don't realise it's important to them that there's competition between MS and real (if they did, there wouldn't be any need for the EU to act, people could sort it out themselves). But that doesn't mean it isn't.

Re:Devils advocate... sort of?

[briancnorton]

I have to agree with you to a point, but uninstalling system components is a slippery slope. Application developers need to rely 100% on certain components being available to them on all client platforms. Perhaps some of the higher level components could go, but a developers job is much easier when they know that EVERY user is going to be able to view XYZ object inside their application without having to write their own components that might conflict with something else.

Internet explorer is critical amongst these as it is the foundation of the MS help system. Media player is critical as consumers expect at least a basic capability to view media locally and online "out-of-the-box."

Re:In all fairness...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I believe that the playing field should be kept level, and that other companies should be treated just as Microsoft was by the EU.

I agree as soon as Apple is declared by the courts to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems I think they should be forced to comply with all the anti-trust regulations that would then apply to them. Oh wait, the same laws do apply it's just that Apple is not a monopoly and MS is.

Yes you can uninstall all of those applications from OS X very easily with the exception of Dashboard which is actually a part of the OS and is built into the UI. It can be removed with a little know how though. All of that, however, is immaterial.

The problem is not with companies bundling things together in general. If someone wants to sell fish and cheese together, great, good luck. The problem is that if one company has a monopoly on something and only sells that that something bundled with something else it drives everyone else out of business. That is why their are special rules for monopolies, because they can upset free trade by coercing their customers. MS has and is doing just that. They can sell all the cheese they want and all the fish they want, but they can't sell only fish and cheese bundles once they have established a monopoly on fish.