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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 don't see a problem with Microsoft bundling any software of their own with Microsoft Windows XP such as Windows Messenger, Windows Media Player, MS Internet Explorer and others. What I have a problem with is the inability to uninstall said media player and other programs without severely hindering the operating system to the point of crashing or worse, incompatibility with programs that don't themselves correctly interface to the default browser, IM client and media player.
That is the real problem I see. Not the exclusion or inclusion of programs or their efforts to play favorites (come on... within reason!) with their own software. Hell, I'd do the same thing. But making it so you can not remove a software program by choice without resorting to some advanced (for the home user) hacking or third party (possibly buggy, problematic or worse - trojaned) program or scripts to do it for you.
What we really need is Microsoft to allow removal of any and all programs that are not basic for an operating system. Yes, even Internet Explorer. By itself, if it weren't tied into the OS itself and able to be run in locked memory away from other programs (to eliminate potential points of attack) it's fine. Older versions weren't so bad because they were just that... stand alone.
I'm not even a fan of the KDE Konqueror(SP?) browser being integrated. While it's great to have a browser by default, the potential problems that can happen (taking out your shell, yes it's happened, AND your X DE) are too great for my taste. The internet hasn't been safe for a LONG time. Even the bandaid of an included firewall with SP2 won't solve much in the long run.
Correct engineering of software programs and their development, it seems, are almost lost. Where are the programming and engineering teams with good ideas with the skill and desire to pull it off?
The people who really were hurt were the competitors. If they were hurt to the point of being driven out of business, -then- the public would be hurt. The whole point of protection from monopoly abuse is to catch these situations -before- the public suffers irreparable harm....
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More like wrong action when action should have been taken.
Indeed. It's not Windows that needs to be broken up, it's MicroSoft that needs to be broken up.
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That is a very short-sighted view. If all you *really* care about deep down is low prices, then I feel sorry for you. When all the small businesses go away, our choices go away. Some people actually want to buy decent items, not just the cheapest items. This is why it hurts when every store goes away and all we're left with is one big Walmart.
Sometimes I look at this like this and people like you and wonder where we're going as a society. Are we really becoming smarter and more advanced? When everyone shops at Walmart, I think not.
You *should* care about competition, not just for lower prices, but because it promotes creativity and the inventive spirit that has gotten us so far. It's a shame that it's dying out in favor of "I'm just a stupid consumer - please tell me what to use!" mentality.
--- witty signature
Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?
Or perhaps the actions were useless because they were poorly designed and did not address the real problem? OK bundling is bad because it allows a monopoly to extend their monopoly. Forcing MS to offer a version without the bundled application is useless because everyone who buys Windows still has to pay for it.
Here comes the inevitable analogy...
The electric company has a monopoly on electricity distribution in any given area. If you want electricity you have to buy from them or go to great lengths to create your own. Imagine if the electric company raised everyone's rates by $10 a month. Now imagine they took that $10 and bought ice cream which they gave away for free to all their customers. Not all of their customers wanted the ice cream and but some liked it. Now the ice cream manufacturers all lost all their business, complained, and sued. The government, in its infinite wisdom decreed that the electric company had to offer electricity without free ice cream, they did not, however, say it had to be cheaper than the other package. The result is nothing. The solution does not stop the bad behavior.
The media player part of the settlement was completely useless. The only parts that were not useless were the parts requiring sharing interoperability information and even those are severely watered down. Obviously if your choice is $60 for electricity or $60 for electricity and ice cream most people will choose the latter. What needs to happen is MS needs to be required to offer the media player only as a separate application. OEMs can add it or Realplayer or both or neither but MS can't give incentives or breaks to OEMs that include windows media player. That would fix the problem. That will likely never happen because MS has too much money and politicians are too corrupt.
I just noticed that you got modded into oblivion. I don't necessarily agree with you, but a lot of people are thinking it, so I wish your post was still above zero... :-(
How do you break up Microsoft? You can't break it up into regional offices like what was done to the phone company, because that doesn't make sense. But how do you break up Microsoft in a way that's not utterly arbitrary?
I mean, everyone around here see Microsoft as selling an OS and bundling a bunch of extra apps with it like a media player and a web browser. The distinction being that they are providing both a platform as well as apps that run on that platform, and a breakup would be between the OS developers and the application developers. But that's not the only way to look at it, and not even necessarily the best way.
If you look at Microsoft, they have purchased webTV and created the XBox, and have split off their OS into a consumer and a professional edition. It's pretty obvious that they are heavily pushing their wares as an "appliance", where people just want it to work. In that context, it's not unreasonable that they sell a complete working system with a web browser and a media player. The OS is secondary to the goal of providing functionality to the user. It's dumb to break off the media player and the browser, because that's what they are trying to sell to the public, a solution and not an OS.
So, you could break off their app divisions that aren't related to their media appliance goals, so you'd have MSWindows+IE+mplayer, and maybe another company that does MS Office and the visio+sharepoint infopath stuff. That would make sense, but it wouldn't address the problems that competitors have with Windows as it is now.
What I want to know is, when people say break up microsoft, what do they mean, and defend their position as to why they think it's a good idea.
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
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.
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
OK fair enough, but without a browser included how are you going to get whichever one you want? Run across town to a store to buy it? Call a company and have them ship it to you?
Its fine to not want to use it, but not having it there at all would be a real pain in the arse.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Yes, easy for you. However, what percent of average PC users do you figure would be able do that?
;-)
Sometimes people who don't know about such things will actually try to use a PC. I know we shouldn't let them, but lets humor them a bit
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert