Re: Macintosh or Windows

Laurence Payne wrote:
Ken wrote:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer-EU-antitrust,8062.html

You said:
For example: the EU forces MS to ship Windows without the Internet
Explorer (and without the Media Player) because they want to give
equal chances to concurring browsers.

That thing about "concurring browsers" might be a translation error by me -
sorry, if that doesn´t make sense in English, but I´m not a native English
speaker. Others in this thread have used the term "competing browsers"
meanwhile...

Well, there´s a XP version, I think it´s called "-N", which comes without
Windows Media Player, due to a former EU decision a few years ago.
I admit, it may have sounded too harsh, but it´s how I understood an article
by the German IT website www.heise.de/ct (publishers of several IT
magazines) recently.
Anyway, the Opera makers actually had the idea, that Windows should not only
ship with IE, but also other browsers, so the users have a free choice which
browser they want to use. The EU folks in Brussels somehow made something
else out of it...

Anyway, competition can be a good thing in general. That doesn´t change
anything about the fact, that MS gets fined for distributing their OS with
their own internet browser while Apple can do exactly the same thing without
anybody caring about it. The "reason" is, that Apple/Safari has a much
smaller market share than MS/IE, but the principle is the same. Apple may
sell a "complete solution package" with everything necessary pre-installed
(internet browser, email software), so the users can start right off using
the web without having to worry about where to get the necessary programs
for these applications.
This does not mean, that I consider Microsoft´s IE and mail software better
than Apple´s, but why is one company fined for the same things that another
is still doing?!

That link predicts how Windows 7 will be distributed. Rather a
different thing.

This particular article relates to Windows 7, but there is definitely also a
(not very wide-spread, though) XP edition without WMP - I have seen it in
action. And there was something about XP also being shipped without IE - I´m
not sure, if that ever happened, but it was at least discussed some years
ago.

For what it's worth, the evaluation copy of Windows 7 installed on one
of my computers installed complete with all the usual utilities.

My evaluation copy of Win7 did the same, surprisingly. ;-)


Phil


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