Nobody Cares About Windows XP N
A few months ago Microsoft got a wrist slapping, the mother of all fines from EU antitrust regulators, and were forced to produce a version of Windows XP without Media Player in it. The creative folks at Microsoft have called this new version "Windows XP N", though to be fair they did try to call it "Reduced Media Edition", but that didn't go down well with the regulators.
XP N is now available to distributors, but according to a CNN story there's no interest in the product.
Quote:
"We'll continue to sell the old version because it's obviously better value for our customers," said Gina Jones, spokeswoman for PC World.
Given that XP N is the same price as XP, yes, the old version is quite clearly better value, because it has Media Player installed. Anybody who doesn't want to use Media Player doesn't need to buy the version without it. All they have to do is install something else, so what's the point in buying a cut-down product?
I'm also struggling to see how this helps Microsoft's competitors. Who are Microsoft's competitors? I use Winamp for audio and VLC for video. Winamp might have been competition, but development on it has essentially been canned now and VLC is a F/OSS affair, which I doubt was ever considered as a competitor.
Furthermore, I'm surprised the EU got Microsoft to ditch a piece of DRM-happy software from their OS. What if XP N users start buying/downloading a less DRM'd piece of software from a "competitor"? I doubt that'll please the music and movie industries. Perhaps people will have to download and install Media Player onto their XP N OS so that they can listen to that DRM'd music file?
The bottom line, as far as I see it, is that XP N is a pointless exercise which will probably result in more aggro.
