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Microsoft Drops Windows 7 E Editions
A week after Microsoft agreed to include a browser ballot screen in Windows 7 systems sold in Europe, then announced that those systems would initially include no browser at all — specifically, no Internet Explorer — Microsoft has changed its mind again and dropped talk of a European Windows 7 E edition. Here is the official Microsoft blog announcement, which includes a screen shot of the proposed ballot screen. The browsers are listed left-to-right in order of market share, with IE therefore having pride of place. PC Pro notes that, since the ballot screen would not appear if IE were not pre-installed, Microsoft's proposal opens the door for Google to work with PC manufacturers to get Chrome on new machines. Note that the browser ballot screen has not yet been accepted by the EU, though the initial reaction to it was welcoming.
The ballot screen would not appear if IE were not installed.
Doesn't that kinda kill the point of the whole project?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
This does look like a good way to go, and its good they also list the main features of every browser. This way more users also get to see how good Opera is too. However to make the list completely unbiased, they could randomize the order on every page load.
Seeing it uses IE to download the browser you want, have they made it so that IE gets removed after that too?
That joke has long past its expiration date; Bill Gates isn't at Microsoft anymore (on a regular basis), the Borg is from a tv show that ended over 15 years ago.
It's like using the Edsel to represent Ford, its just old and stale. time for slashdot to get with the times.
Or Konqueror?
Bah.
I'm no lover of MS, but this business of them being in trouble for bundling the browser made sense back when Netscape cost $50 and there were no real choices for the layman. Nowadays it's really a non-issue. After all, anyone who cares is free to download any number of free browsers. When "free as in beer" is the default price of a web browser, how is MS giving theirs away anti-competitive?
Caveat Utilitor
I agree - lets change it to a flying chair.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The logistics of separating out the IE browser from the rest of the OS must have been more daunting than anticipated. I do wish the "ballot screen" idea would be used in places outside the EU, as well...
Are those orders canceled since the product no longer exists, or will they get the Full (non-upgrade) Win7 version instead?
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Actually, as long as Microsoft keep pushing their one-vendor lock-in agenda, the icon is appropriate and not past its due date. When Microsoft becomes a beacon of openess that respects diversity, then the icon should be changed. The Borgs represent uniformity and control. Exactly what Microsoft stands for.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Will firefox get the prime position?
A computer is a tool, but I am not. I use Linux
Let's see: Originally they were the implacable, unstoppable all-assimilating hyper-baddies, yet every time they threatened disaster the goodies found a way to defeat them. After a while this got routine and they lost their menace; now, despite their still awesome power, they're somehow boring and irrelevant.
Eh, still seems like a good fit to me.
Resistance is futile...you will be... furnished.
AT&ROFLMAO
Then where's the Steve Jobs borg?
Well Apple's little update-jacking fiasco seems to have paid off. The screenshot shows that Safari is the third most popular Windows browser, in front of Chrome and Opera. I don't have any problem with Safari (fast, small, standards compliant) but I wonder if this is all an Apple plan... and they seriously need to just use Windows widgets and styles instead of imposing their Cocoa look on the windows environment..
I agree - lets change it to a flying chair.
This was modded Funny when it is in fact an awesome suggestion.
I can't see the MS blog page, it's /.ed, but from the summary I felt that this solution seems to imply that browsers are mutually exclusive?
I'd hope that MS would not even go that far but you can never rule anything out with them.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
And how much would it cost to get something adware-infested into the browser selection screen?
Well, since the list is ordered by market share, you would probably have to get enough users to use your "browser" to get past Opera in terms of market share.
On second thought, that sounds very doable...
No need, the apple logo has the same effect for me.
It doesn't matter which browser is installed from the install disk. Most users don't install from the install disk anyway. What matters is which browsers the OEMs will put on the machine, and which they will make the default. Even if Microsoft made an IE-free version of windows Dell and HP and everyone else would still install IE on the machines before selling it to customers.
Given the fact that you'd need to understand what a "web browser" is before being able to make a decent choice here, that behaviour is acceptable. IE8 is decent enough, gets updated automatically and should be a good choice for all those that don't understand what a browser is.
Those that do shouldn't have the slightest problem installing an application.
Linux is facism
Have you seen some of the kernel devs? They're definitely not facist.
Seriously, that would be perfect.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If no browsers are installed by default, how will... users get to the internet? Obviously, this question isn't geared towards the SD crowd that probably has two or three different portable browsers on their usb stick, and copies of all the exes for any browser you can think of laying around in their download folder. But its geared towards those, who don't know that much about computers, and want to be able to open up their computer and go online.... Looking forward to the responses....
1. Upon the release of Win7 in the EU, MS will be inundated by support calls with "Why is the Internet broken!" or "How do I get on the Internet!". Guess what browser they are going to tell them to install?
2. Upon Win7 connecting to the internet for the first time guess what, Windows Update will probably list IE8 as an update.
So really what has the EU actually done? Not much other than piss off a shit load of users and make MS look bad (by removing the browser). I hope that MS captures all of the users complaints about this and shoves them up the ass of the EU when all is said and done.
No, it wouldn't. Even MS haters have to admit that the chair jokes are wearing incredibly thin. It was funny for a while, now it's just... dull.
I write bullshit
"the ballot screen would not appear if IE were not pre-installed" What a bunch of shit. Someone who's supposed to be an authority on the issue is claiming that it absolutely MUST be IE displaying it. You don't need to have a full featured browser (or a browser of any kind) to display this kind of ballot screen. Just a connection or a collection of installable browsers. The ballot can be a normal windows app.
Provided completely without any copyrights withheld, I present, a better MS icon:
The Microsoft Flying Chair
Download several sizes, including transparent PNG images, in a ZIP
(Admittedly, the icon had a lot more motion blur before I shrunk it. :-( I could enhance it if there is interest from the Slashdot gang.
Microsoft had announced that they had an RTM version, and now they make such a profound change. This is really odd. Is there any good explanation? Have they a separate, decoupled RTM process for the European versions? Has there never been a "Windows 7 E"? And how much would it cost to get something adware-infested into the browser selection screen?
What profound change? A single change to the set of pre installed apps that the installer checks, a simple chooser screen set to autorun and that is it. It's about as profound as changing the default wallpaper.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
A company icon is representative of a company's philosophy -- their actions over a long period of time. Under Gates, the borg symbol doesn't stop being germane simply because time has passed.
Parenthetically, it's not the age of the reference, but how well it's stayed in the collective mind. You could say "I'll get you, my pretty!" and most people would get it, even though the reference is over 70 years old.
Ballmer's tantrums are well known, and not confined just to the single chair incident. But the chair is a reference that most people in the geek world would get, so as long as he's in office and exhibits those characteristics, it fits.
Personally, I'd use a 1" #8 wood screw, shown actual size, but I'm willing to compromise on a flying chair.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Then I bet they would be in a very similar position to where MS is now with antitrust suits aimed at them.
But they aren't and they probablly won't be in the forseeable future. They seem content to stay in the luxury market.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
People need to stop modding this shit as insightful. Explorer isn't based on Internet Explorer either.
What you perceive as Safari is two components: Safari, and WebKit. WebKit is something you can't remove from Mac OS, as the shell would die horribly without it. You can happily drag Safari to the trash.
What you perceive as Internet Explorer is two components: Internet Explorer, and Trident. Trident is something you can't remove from Windows, as the shell would die horribly without it. You can happily drag Internet Explorer to the recycle bin (with one caveat: Windows will try replace it without some coaxing).
As you can see, the Safari and Internet Explorer arguments are one and the same, and people need to stop pretending that the Mac OS setup is somehow different.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Being a computer support professional, I do a LOT of Windows installs. One of the things that makes it quicker/easier is that you know what to expect where. So you can quickly click past setup screens. In the case of this screen, I want it in a set order. That way, I can quickly find the browser I want to set as default on that particular system. If it got randomized, it would slow things down and/or cause mistakes.
The order doesn't really matter, so long as there is one. This is actually a fairly intelligent way of doing it: The larger the market share of a browser, the more probable it is that someone will want to use that browser as their default.
Nah, Steve Jobs with Hypnotoad eyes would be more appropriate.
>Microsoft's proposal opens the door for Google to work with PC manufacturers to get Chrome on new machines.
This has always been an option. If Google wants to pay PC manufacturers to install Chrome as a default they can do so both in the US and the EU. It's one of the results of the anti-trust cases of the 90s.
That's flippin' awesome! Good Job. Here's one vote for the new Microsoft icon. Of course, I like the BillGatesBorg icon, too.
So, in every case they choose a different ranking function, one that suits them. But of course, who would expect otherwise...
Apple's market share could grow to 100% and they still not get into any trouble by installing Safari in every Mac they sell. Why? MS got into troubles not because of the zero price of their products bundled with Windows but because of the anticompetitive deals they made with PC manufacturers: I'll make you pay more for a Windows license if you install anything else but what I accept. If they didn't do that, the bundling of IE would still be fine. MS is being penalized now as an attempt to recreate equal market conditions.
By the way, Apple is the only company that can sell OSX based computers so there are no other manufacturers to bully but I wonder what's going to happen if Apple's market share will reach 25%: how the other manufacturer will react to the shrinking of their market shares? What's sure is that they won't silently die out.
...
...
/rant
People forget that Microsoft never set out to shove IE down people's throats. You didn't have 5,000 IE CD coasters sent to you in the mail like AOL and even Netscape did for years and years. (And this was even in the Win95 era when IE didn't ship on the OS.) (If anything you got MSN CDs and they were for a 'folder' based online system, and nothing to do with HTML or browsing.)
Microsoft's concept behind IE was to add HTML rendering to the Windows OS. Period.
This is so wrong I've gotta comment on it.
Microsoft promoted IE as a way to kill Netscape.
Microsoft embraced/extended/extinguished Navigator with IE.
Microsoft locked in from the host side to force people to use IE for many of the highest profile sites. Firefox has to go under an assumed name in order for these sites not to look like crap.
What Microsoft did with IE was so wrong that it was part of that big lawsuit way back when, that Microsoft lost (and then "won" through the typically corrupt appeal process).
Microsoft didn't peddle coasters, but what they did was far worse.
Man, the Microsoft shills just can't wait to rewrite history...
I come here for the love