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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?"
I see what you are trying to say, but it really isn't the case. There is no paying for Media Player, its "free". Now your implying that they are just rolling the cost into Windows, but I don't agree with that.
They have offered Media Player as a free download for Mac OSX as well (I don't think they do that anymore, but not sure).
The issue was never about abuse of users in the way you are suggesting, it was about other companies (Real) not being able to compete because Media Player is bundled with Windows. Now you can argue it SHOULD have been about other issues, but the fact is the EU case was about other companies not being able to compete not about any user "abuse".
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Of course no one wants the stripped down version because it costs the same as the full-blown version .
This isn't vindication for MS - it is just proof of the stupidity of the EU bureaucrats who did a half-assed job of imposing the punishment on MS. If they weren't so incompetent, they would have mandated that not only must MS make a stripped down version, they also gotta sell it for proportionally less too where "lots" is equal to some value of proportional...
reference: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22283