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Microsoft Windows XP N Flops
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?"
Why didn't the European Union actually solve the problem, by forcing Microsoft to open up Windows Media Video? I think that would be fair instead of unbundling it like this. It does not solve anything, and people who get XP N, will end up installing WMP anyway.
Oh, and what about the 'real monopoly' in Windows? It is also known as Internet Explorer, and only God knows why EU did not do anything about that when they were at it.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Who didn't see that coming like a mile away? Windows XP N is a hard sell to say the least. Not only does it cost exactly the same amount of money as regular Windows XP, you will probably also get more support calls from angry costumers who say something along the lines of "why isn't video working".
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Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
/. chose to ignore: /. for the sake of starting a flamewar of course didn't mention anything else.
MS having to offer a version of XP without the media player preinstalled isn't the only outcome of the antitrust case and certainly isn't the most important part, yet
First off, people should be aware that MS was also fined 500 million euros, quite a lot of money, wouldn't you agree.
Second, and probably most important, the EU found that MS is on pupose hindering interoperability between its products and third party products. In essence, they use their monopoly on the desktop, to also sell server software. To counter this MS now has to disclose technical information to its competitors to enable them to compete on an equal footing.
Now of course MS is trying to give out as little information as possible, but they don't seem to get by with this tactic, which is of course a good thing.
Third, about the media player. I don't think it's that important if companies actually sell the version without the media player, what is important is the fact that it is now clear that bundling more and more desktop apps in order to utilize a monopoly in one area to get market share in an other one is a no-no.
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.
You are if people supplying or selling the data or entertainment media you want to access only supply it in these proprietary (I include IE here, we all know lots of sites only work in IE) formats. You can use various codecs etc, but when it comes to DRM you have no legal alternative. So this is handing MS a monopoly on downloadable media because they can tell all the vendors they only need to supply in one locked format, paying Bill his tithe for every download. Trying to forestall this is what the whole case is about, not the players per se.