Microsoft Windows XP N Flops 277
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?"
Re:No wonder it failed. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? (Score:5, Informative)
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 ?
Tax application (application) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? (Score:3, Informative)
OK, so that's understandable from a support perspective. The Microsoft support desk wouldn't want to deal with any random crap loaded up by the manufacturer, particularly if some of that random crap made the system unstable.
That doesn't make it right, though.
Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
What player do you use? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You do not understand the term 'monopoly'. (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently you need to speak with the judges of the US DC circuit court, because they don't understand the term 'monopoly' either. After you clear it up with them, maybe they'll help you explain it to the European Commission.
The very fact that Apple exist and sell their own operating system means that Microsoft does not have a 'monopoly' on desktop operating systems.
The courts disagree. You'd better straighten them out.
Similarly, Microsoft were never convicted of being a 'monopoly', which in itself is not illegal, they were convicted of 'monopolistic practices'.
Of course they weren't "convicted" of being a monopoly. It's not a crime. But they were found to be a monopoly. A judical finding of fact like that is a big deal, because it's a prerequisite to being convicted of leveraging your monopoly in anti-competitive ways. Without that judicial finding, you have a simple, slam-dunk defense "We can't have abused our monopoly because we don't have one."
Of course, this being slashdot, this comment will simply be ignored, or even modded 'troll'.
Yep. Sometimes /. moderators *do* get it right.
Re:It is open (Score:1, Informative)
And the anti-trust settlement precludes all of this behavior now.
Seriously, if you know of an instance where MS prevented an OEM from shipping Firefox as the default browser, you and your fellow groklawers should bring it to the attention of the antitrust judge.
I dunno about yaboot... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a bit shocked you manged to make your Mini unbootable, even installing iffy software. I'm not completely up-to-date, but booting with command-option-N-V held down should have fixed you up. Or perhaps booting with command-option-O-F and typing "reset-nvram" at the prompt.
I take it inserting a CD and holding down C during boot (or just option and selecting the CD from the list) didn't work?
Re:Huh! and is MS to be blamed for that?? (Score:2, Informative)
Apple has Safari/Webkit bundled with the OS, but as they only have single digit market share this bundled applications can not be used to twist anybodies arm. They can't make proprietary web extensions that fail to render on other peoples browsers, no developer would use them.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is the clear market leader. They can add some wonderful proprietary extension to Internet Explorer, tell developers that this new extension will function on 90% of the target clients browsers, and sit back and watch competitor's browsers get pushed out of the market.
Clear market leaders, like Microsoft, are legally expected to play by different rules, and for good reason.
Re:Restrictions don't work (Score:2, Informative)
I can't remember using Netscape 3.0, but I used 4.0 quite a bit on a Windows 98 machine, and Netscape was far more stable than Internet Explorer. I could literally use it for hours at a time, with multiple windows open. I tried using IE more than a few times, and multiple browser windows caused IE (really the entire OS) to choke after a while. If you compare the integrated components of IE, memory usage wasn't even that much more for the Netscape suite.
Anyways, if you look at the graph [wikipedia.org] of usage you'll see that, while the Netscape suite was released in '96, Netscape share didn't really begin to plummet until '98, when Microsoft integrated IE 5.0 into Windows.
Re:No wonder it failed. (Score:3, Informative)