No Media Player in New Release?

Oh, I apologize. When I first viewed the post by you containing "It's not a "new" release, btw - it's just MS following the EU's antitrust rulings." -- it didn't contain that.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this ruling rather unusual?

I mean a lot of people I know would never use Media Player in their lives.

From what I have encountered over the years, the biggest beef against MS is the way that they have embedded Internet Explorer into their operating systems. And that does not even seem to have got a mention from the EU?

Hey, even Outlook Express would make a better target :D

I can see that I have no future in politics :eek:

The EU considered going after MS for bundling IE with XP, but decided to not go through with it - partly because of what happened in the US when they tried to break up MS (the US failed), and partly because of a previous case where the EU tried to prevent a merger between GE and Honeywell (the EU failed).

IE is a feature, not a product :D

Also, the EU usually only goes after a company after complaints have been filed. In this case, RealNetworks filed a complaint against Media Player being embedded - I guess no browser companies filed complaints with the EU after the failed US complaints...

Nobody is buying Windows EU though.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24129

I'm no great fan of media player but I dislike Real even more.
Give the option of 2 versions of Windows (one with Media player the other without) for the same price I'd take the one with.

If it was not for the fact that i already own a version of windows xp pro i would gladly buy the windows media player less version.

I normally don not even use wmp. Instead i use winamp for music (mp3 but mostly ogg) and vlc for other things.

I have realplayer on here too because vlc has a few things it does not yet support. (.rm)

Thanks Negative that explains a lot.

I had sort of lost track of the case because it was dragging on so long, then they came up with that media player stuff :confused:

oh well..................politicians :D

My limited local experience is that people who use media players tend to have their own favourite, so what ships with Microsoft doesn't really matter?

Maybe MS got these guys to put in the complaint and take the heat off IE?.............stranger things have happened at sea?

:cool:

Hey Hey,

I think the whole Windows XP N is a rather lousy idea... Has anyone looked into Windows Update with XP N? Is media player going to come down the next time you update Windows, or is there code that prohibits it from being installed (this option seems unlikely)..

I like this comment

Quote:

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Source: http://www.betanews.com/article/Micr...sal/1117637571
The Commission was also upset with how Microsoft handled the removal of Windows Media Player from XP. Regulators feel Microsoft made the special edition unappealing to OEMs by not lowering the price, essentially killing any demand. Microsoft competitors have also claimed the WMP-free release does not work properly with their audio and video software.

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Competitors are most likely used to their software using the codecs that ship with WMP... without WMP those codecs also don't exist... So they're whining when it has WMP and when it doesn't have WMP.. As for pricing... I don't see why anyone would expect a price drop... To me having WMP ship with the product was always a perk.. not something I was paying extra for.

I think that this could be beneficial in only on circumstance... They've released Home N and Pro N... If you can obtain it with a Corporate license, it'd be a nice install for an enterprise environment... One less additional piece of software for employees to distract themselves with. I've actually been surprised for quite sometime that Microsoft doesn't offer a stripped down version of XP for enterprise client PCs.

I think the bigger item here is the releasing of source code to competitors... I'd say someone in the EU really doesn't like Microsoft... If you're going to force this, it should be forced on every closed source product regardless of size or interest...

Anyways... if anyone knows the answer to WMP and Windows Update with XP N, I'd be really curious to hear the answer.

Peace,
HT

HT > since there have always been European versions of Windows XP, Windows Update has always been separate from the "American" version. The versions are different, and so are the updates (they all need to be translated, for one thing... ).
I'm sure MS will make sure no WMP gets "updated" "by accident" :)

A price drop would be stupid. Media player is provided free of charge: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...&qstechnology=

So a price drop would not make sense seeing as how WMP is given free to users.

And, although, I'm all for open-source and free software. Bill Gates founded that company, and the software in it...even if he bought it. Anti-trust is anti-capitalist. Yes, there are bugs, yes there are security issues. If you don't like it, then use something else. There is no reason MS should be paying $608M because they included WMP. That's like suing Ford for including their (usually problematic) transmissions in their vehicles. Would you buy a vehicle without a transmission? I sure as hell wouldn't.

A_T

A transmission is a vital part of a car... a media player isn't exactly a necessary part of an OS...
A more correct comparison would be Ford selling their cars with RCA sound systems, making it impossible to remove the RCA sound system, and charging you more for that crap. Oh, and making it possible for someone standing right next to your car to scream "RCA", and all wheels would fall off, and doors would open...