Microsoft Worried OEM 'Craplets' Will Harm Vista

elsilver writes "An article at the CBC indicates that Microsoft is worried that the assorted crap most OEM companies load onto a new machine may affect users' opinion of Vista. An unnamed executive is concerned that the user will conclude the instability of the non-MS-certified applications is Vista's fault. Is this a serious concern, or is MS trying to bully OEMs into only including Vista-certified apps? As for the OEMs, one "removed older DVD-writing software they found was incompatible and replaced it with Vista's own software." — do they get points for realizing it was both buggy AND redundant?"

Comments

I feel their pain.

[brennanw]

If only people didn't WRITE PROGRAMS to run on OPERATING SYSTEMS.

Re:It IS Vista's fault

[dave420]

No. Not at all. But thanks for trying to take part in the conversation.

Re:Craplets?

[Unski]

You must be a riot at parties.

More MicroSoft FUD

[dfoulger]

Invoking the term "Craplets" is, at best, a new MicroSoft strategy to acquire by word of mouth that which they are no longer allowed to acquire through licensing terms. At worst, its setting up an excuse for Vista's failure.

Its hard to believe that so many people don't see this as yet another Microsoft strategy to shore up their "monopoly" position. I assume that at least some of the people responding are Microsoft trolls (e.g. paid advocates for their software).

Yes, OEM's often add a lot of non-Microsoft content to their machines, and yes, some of it is badly written (the same can be said for a lot of the Microsoft content), and yes, OEM's often get paid to put some portion of the non-MS content there. PC's are competitively priced commodities and it can be very difficult to turn a profit on a machine without resorting to this kind of product advertising. But a lot of useful software usually gets included as well, especially since Microsoft consent decrees have put a stop to the old Microsoft practice of banning the addition of some competitive products to the machine.

OEM's can put Firefox, Opera, Netscape or some other non-MS browser on the desktop today. One wishes that more did. There was a time when OEM's couldn't ship Netscape or other competitive browsers on new Windows shipments because they'd have to pay a penalty to Microsoft if they did. That's why Netscape is no longer a company.

There was a time when Lotus 123 was the leading spreadsheet, Wordperfect was the leading word processor, and so on. Microsoft wrote licenses that penalized OEMs for shipping the competitors and, for a year or so, made Word and Excel available to OEM's as a part of the Windows bundle. Just who couldn't sell a copy of their software for over a year (Lotus and Novell). Guess who leveraged an operating system monopoly into a monopoly in Word Processing and Spreadsheets (Microsoft). Guess which spreadsheet is still better (123). Its sad. It really is.

Yes, AOL, Earthlink, and others frequently litter the new desktops, and that's one of the reasons why MSN hasn't become yet another Microsoft monopoly. Overall a very good thing.

Yes, Quicken is frequently shipped on new machines, and that's one of the reasons why Microsoft Money hasn't become yet another Microsoft monopoly. Again, a very good thing.

The same is true for other software.

I don't plan to move to Vista. Heck, the only reason I own XP licenses is that I contracted to do some programming on the platform. MS software never improves. It just acquires more sources of failure. I've been systematically moving to Linux and MacIntosh. Nothing I've seen about Vista so far has done anything but increase my determination to move Microsoft off my machines.