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Microsoft Windows XP N Flops

Posted by Zonk on from the bad-ideas-follow-bad-ideas dept.

ChocLinux writes "Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens have announced they have no plans to pre-install Windows XP N, the version of Windows without a bundled media player that Microsoft released to comply with the European Commission antitrust ruling. It is now almost six months since Microsoft released Windows XP N, and the fact that no-one wants to sell it suggests that this antitrust case may be going the way of the US one. Also, the article raises the question - now that RealNetworks has settled with Microsoft, will anyone bother to complain about this? Of course there's a chance that the EC might bring a new antitrust case against Microsoft, but how much more effective is that likely to be?"

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No wonder it failed. by MathFox · · Score: 4, Informative

    The EC verdict had several points:
    1. A fine of ~500 Million Euro
    2. Windows without media player
    3. Making available documentation for interfaces.

    Microsoft is appealing the verdict and dragging its feet with respect to point 3. We'll need to keep up the pressure on Microsoft, the EU and others to have Microsoft open its interfaces.

    --
    extern warranty;
    main()
    {
    (void)warranty;
    }
  2. Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Every modern OS has one built in.

    That's not true.

    Mac & Windows have them built in, but they are a minority.

    Which, pray, is the built in Web Browser for OpenBSD 3.8 ?

    How about Solaris 10 ?

    What Media Player does FreeBSD ship with ?

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  3. Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? by macpeep · · Score: 5, Informative

    Incorrect.

    The situations is exactly identical on Mac and on Windows. On Mac OS X, the web browser (HTML redering) functionality is WebKit and Safari is just a thin GUI shell around it. In the same way, IE is just a thin GUI shell around the web browser (HTML rendering) functionality embedded into the OS.

    If you remove the IE shell, nothing will break in Windows. However, if you remove the HTML rendering capability lots of things will break. In the same way, if you remove Safari nothing will break in OS X but if you remove WebKit, tons of things will break. There's a HUGE amount of applications that rely on WebKit!!

    Of course Slashdot readers often overlook this fact because they think it's cool to bitch about Microsoft.