Media Player may be cut from windows

[Jimmy Little]

these laws are crazy if one company can make everything then why stop them!

anti trust laws are wrong!

[Gunbuster]

Media Player, Messenger and Outlook Express are 3 of the first things I hide in program access and defaults. IE is only left for Horizons which uses an ActiveX plugin.

If you compare WMP 7 and above with the other bundled programs its very feature heavy and heavily supports MS's own formats. Paint/Notepad/Wordpad/IE/Moviemaker all to varying degrees perform basic operations that are handy when you first start using windows or enough to get you by until you can install your preferred packages. WMP directly competes with Itunes, Real and Music Match. Having it installed by default bypasses any decision making on the users part. Maybe if they had a simple WMP Express (or something) that plays files, but doesn't rip or choose where you should buy them from MS wouldn't be in so much trouble.

[Flibb]

Ok whats next remove the firewall, that competes with loads of retail packages.

[directhex]

these laws are crazy if one company can make everything then why stop them!

anti trust laws are wrong!

so, in the 6-7 years since Microsoft used their monopoly to win the browser wars, how have they innovated? how has the product matured & imporved? how has it become more stable and secure?

can you honestly tell the difference between IE4 and IE6?

or can you say how many miles ahead of office 97 office 2003 is? i mean really? after all, Lotus Smartsuite and Corel's offerings are still helping to drive innovation tod... oh, wait.

that's what happens when a monopoly wins - they loose any motivation to innovate. in thie direct case in point, can you tell me why you think wmp10 is worth using over wmp7? does it provide great innovations that justify microsoft's assorting licensing terms? infact, i suggest you read the EULA for wmp9 or wmp10, you may be rather shocked.

microsoft have abused their monopoly for years in order to stagnate. if a competitior comes along, even with an open approach, ms stamp on them. many moons ago there was BeOS, as a relatively minor alternative os (but a rather kickass one nonetheless). their stance was "yeah, we can't completely replace windows, but dual boot us & you'll love us" - problem is, the microsoft oem licenses absolutely forbid selling windows dual-boot with another os. a company could sell BeOS machines, or Windows machines - and microsoft's sales reps made more than subtle hints that if they sold a single BeOS pc, they might find it very hard to get ahold of Windows in future. with Microsoft as a monopoly, the companies couldn't afford to drop MS.

so, THAT'S a brief rundown of why we need protection from rape by corporate monsters.

any questions?

[Butuz]

Well im not disagreeing with you hex, or agreeing with microsofts past tactics. But the fact is, they make the Best O/S. A good browser, The Best Office package, arguably the best media player, and they do innovate occasionaly (use Onenote on a Tablet PC and then tell me that is not innovation).

But apart from that, yeh theyre a monopoly which is never good.

Butuz

[ikonia]

ok I'll be honest here.

I use products because they are good, not because they are bundled with other apps.

1) WMP is a bloaty app that does the job. If thats all you need it for why change
2.) Winamp is fine, but with version 5 has gone a little bloaty, and the video playing and skin ablity has made it slower and a bit more bloaty, however it still wins for me on the windows platform.
3.) Real player is bloaty, takes over your PC, has adverts in it ??? uses propritary formats that they won't release to other app makers (is this not an anti trust)


from the 3 examples above I'd probably choose winamp - even though media player would do, because for me "its better"

I really don't think this thing of antitrust is really that important. I use mozillan and firefox for my browsers because it is better than IE, it is up to other companes such as winamp, or mozilla to market their product as better or supply a reason for using it so that others change, not "stop MS including software" you do'nt have to install it, at build time, un tick the "internet explorer" option at build time, persuade companies such as alienware, scan, smaller computer companies to seel OEM builds with firefox, I don't like MS but blaming them for your own companies short falls is poor.

[ikonia]

I forgot to mention, at the same time DirectHex's point is valid, but its not down to Microsoft to stop making stuff, its down to people like Netscape who where miss guided and in a mess as a company to promote their own quality product.

MS office isn't bundled with WinXP ??? so why do people choose it ? because MS market it as the best office solution around.

[Flibb]

The marketting thing is a big reason. Went to pcworld the other day. The majority of peple buying new pc's were getting norton, loads of people were buying it who allready had a pc. Thast marketting for you. They probably didnt really know what it does but its the big safe name.

[Gunbuster]

One thing that really gets my goat is Microsoft's stance on free software.
If they make it they are just giving the average user what they want, being nice and improving brand value. If anyone else makes it they are stifling innovation, opening security holes and destroying the income of the small companies.