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Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe
jbeale53 writes "It seems that to install Windows 7 in Europe, you'll have to wipe the system and start over. There will be no ability to upgrade. From the article, 'The unfortunate side effect has been caused by Microsoft's decision to avoid any further EU censure on Windows 7 by removing Internet Explorer 8 from the OS. Because Internet Explorer is so deeply integrated within Vista, it's not currently possible to perform an upgrade that removes IE.' Why would Microsoft cripple it this way? Just to try and point fingers at the European Union? Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup."
As much as I would like to find fault with Microsoft here...
Anybody that "upgrades" a Windows operating system in place from one version to another is an idiot.
People should reinstall their Windows from scratch at least once a year. Any less frequent than that and the successive patches to patches to patches become too much for the system to bear. The successive software installs and uninstalls leave hanging dependencies that slow the system to even worse of a crawl than it was at first install. An "upgraded" system drags with it the legacy rootkits previously installed, and those cause issues even in the best case. In the worst case the malware and crudware bog down the system so much you're lucky to get any work done at all.
A fresh install of XP on modern equipment is almost as snappy as Linux. After a year you're powering up and going for coffee while it "wakes up". After an "OS Upgrade" you don't dare power the thing off unless you're going on vacation for a week. Patch Tuesday has spawned "Team Building Wednesday".
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Bracing for modded down... but here goes.
There was really no reason for them not to be able to bundle their own software in their own OS. Why isn't Apple being told not to include Safari and iTunes and iCal and iWhateverthefuck in their OS? A software company should be able to include whatever they want, and if people don't like it then either don't buy it or stop complaining. But the fact of the matter is... anybody who currently uses Internet Explorer either likes it better than everything else, has no clue of the difference between it and Firefox and whatever else, or the more likely reason that their company forces them to, and that is not going to change no matter how many browsers are included in the OS.
But anyway the point of this comment is to say that of course Microsoft is going to do their best to make sure they meet all of the requirements and then some, because they are pissed. If Microsoft were a sole proprietorship and I was the sole proprietor, I would certainly tell the EU to fuck off by making things as hard as possible for them as a result of their stupid decision.
Also, great work on the unbiased summary there jbeale53 and samzenpus.
The problem was, you could still access the internet via explorer, just by typing a URL in any windows explorer window. Further, deleting iexplore.exe means you couldn't get updates. I'd call that a big repercussion.
The point was not that Microsoft couldn't create a version of Windows without a browser, obviously they could. They couldn't simply remove it instantly without basically creating a system that was non-functional.
The judge gave them 30 days to remove IE. Not enough time to re-engineer the OS without the browser in a way that wouldn't break things.
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The MSHTML is the issue. What's the point of saying you have removed the web browser, when you really haven't? If you want to remove the web browser, the HTML rendering engine has to go. Otherwise, anyone could wrap a simple browser wrapper around IE's rendering engine and still get the effect of shutting out browser competitors. Microsoft is completely right in this, and the EU is simply wrong. A modern operating system includes a bundled browser.
This is my sig.
Monopolies get special treatment as far as the law is concerned, and for good reason.
Microsoft, if given freedom to trade as it pleases, is in a position to stifle competition by making interoperability impossible and by not allowing competitor's software to work on its systems. This is great for Microsoft shareholders in the short to medium term, but it is terrible for society as a whole. That is why anti-competitive practices are regulated and prosecuted, especially when it comes to large monopolistic corporations.
As a side note, I believe anti-competitive behaviour is bad for shareholders in the long term too. It is no guarantee against failure, but more likely when a monopoly really doesn't innovate its products and services, then the inevitable failure will come along in a catastrophic way. Also, shareholders being members of society should want progression for society as a whole, not just a progression of their net worth relative to everyone else.
Comparing the original XP release without Service Packs (circa 2001) to a much newer Linux install (2009) is a cheap argument. Next you'll tell us that nVidia's GeForce 256 is trash next to an ATI Radeon HD 4000.
An XP CD with SP3 slipstreamed is slightly faster than earlier versions, if reports are to be believed. If you manage to make an XP system as slow as Vista on the same hardware you're doing something wrong.
Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup.
Saying "only" doesn't make that statement any less absurd. How is the selection for these browsers to be made? Because you know the moment Microsoft announces they're to put "select few" browsers in Windows 7, everyone will want theirs in.
;)
Opera says "top 5" browsers, but picking browsers by market share, in order to promote less popular competitors results in a bitter irony. Not to mention the magical number "5" comes from Opera being 5-th in desktop browser market share. If it was "top 3" they wouldn't even be in that list, depriving them of the purpose of their own lawsuit. Have you seen what YouTube says to IE6 users? Please upgrade to a modern browser: Chrome, IE8, Firefox. Opera's nowhere in that list. Should they sue YouTube?
What the EU commission wants from Microsoft is a solution that can't be carried out in any sensible manner. But maybe that's exactly what they want, have you seen what EU charges Microsoft for failing to abide? To paraphrase another euphemism, let's call it "surprise tax"
This tired argument of comparing original XP release to current Linux distros really needs to stop. It's apples to oranges and the only thing it accomplishes is a loss of credibility for Linux as a solution ("can't it handle a fair comparison?"). Especially the WPA comment from grandparent is ironic as the out-of-the-box WLAN experience (i.e. just works vs. ndiswrapper hacking) is just now getting together (and comparable to ~XP SP1)
Alright, here's where I'm confused:
In Windows Vista, you cannot remove IE. You can upgrade from 7 to 8, of course, but there's no way to remove it, and things will break if you try, because it was never designed to operate without IE present, although it's certainly better than XP was in that respect.
In Windows 7, you can remove IE. Control Panel, Programs and Features, click the link in the sidebar to "Turn Windows features on or off", uncheck Internet Explorer 8, click Yes to the warning that this might break stuff, let it reboot, wait a few extra seconds while it "configures" things, and it's gone. The rendering engine is still there, of course, but the application is gone.
Presumably, after you have upgraded from Vista to 7, this is still true; you can still remove IE by following the above steps.
So how hard is it to just automatically add the uninstall to the upgrade process? Make it optional: after completing an upgrade, ask the user whether they'd like to remove IE or keep it.
And hey, if I recall correctly, they were planning to offer two versions anyway: you could either have IE preinstalled, or not. So, they could make the no-IE version clean-install-only, and the with-IE version could be clean-install or upgrade.
This is definitely not a technical problem.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;