News Could the EU fines delay Vista?

I end up spending way too much time being a, eh, defender of capitalism, but for a European board (and c'mon, must admit, the EU as a whole is ten times as socialist as America, its in its very culture -- some countries more than others) I'm really happy to see the responses that I have so far

The EU ought to be worried about real problems.. like the 1% lag in gdp growth as compared to the US growth rate. That kind of difference exists for a lot of reasons, mostly cultural at this point, but none of the reasons have anything to do with bundling WMP and IE in XP or Vista.. Indeed, part of the reason a gap exists is because I assure you, and history suggests it'd be true, in America if some large problem was mentioned in the national news someone somewhere across the vast nation will hear about it, ponder it briefly, and then get an idea on how to make a killing off of a solution, or somehow feeding off the problem (which generates wealth not just for them, but for his future employees). Doesn't matter how complex the problem is; complexity just means its more likely to be some MIT or UC Berkeley geek. In Europe, on the other hand, instead of "How do I make money from this, or what stocks will profit from this, and how does this impact the macro picture so that I can best allocate my resources, either business resources or investment resources?" the reaction seems to much more commonly be "I best tell my union boss about this" or to go complain to some friends about how the American imperialists are being naughty. That's the culture that the EU needs to be assaulting ruthlessly, not MS!

 

That depends..

Products born of socialism have had a mediocre track record so far in the 21st century.. Airbus vs Boeing: "Do or die" capitalist vs "I still drink mommys milk" propped-up Airbus, Dreamliner ends up a total cut above A350. OpenOffice vs Office 07, no comparison. Vista in ease of use & productivity vs, say, Ubuntu? Again, no comparison, and no distro can touch OSX, either. GIMP vs Adobe? Heh, tried using GIMP at a summer job; the dimensions of a sign I was trying to design was literally too big for poor GIMP to handle, yet I'd done projects three to four times the size in Photoshop. It's not even fair to expect commercial-grade top-notch quality and innovation out of open-source like that.

In a no-MS-in-EU situation there wouldn't be much choice but to accept whatever came down the pipe, but one look at history shows that unless its born of a competitive nature, with the life savings of investors and the jobs of the employees on the line, then it'll be mediocrity warmed over. And mediocrity wouldn't even begin to become a world standard just because Europe is forced to default to it.

Thats assuming though that its open-source or government sponsored, of course. A star OS and productivity suite rising above a competitive war amongst innovative and ruthless companies would be a whole different ballgame entirely, and good for EU. World standard is still a stretch, but it'd still be good.

 

I tip my hat to you good Sir!

 

You are making some hard comparisons over here... I do dare say pre-judged... But none the less I am not contradicting you. I personally am a total OSS user, and I admit OSS has to improve on some sides, but:

MS Office 07 <> OO2 : Don't compare software that's still in beta to those that's released some time ago... Maybe OO3 will knock down MS office... I don't know, and so do you. And then again, compare MS office 03 to OO2, the features 99% of the users actually use, are more then comparable. I remind you, it isn't a niche market, its for the masses... It's just the closed standards MS applies that is killing OO.
Vista <> Ubuntu [ <> Gentoo, which I use]: I must say, hands down, my level of productivity is 2-3 times higher on my Gentoo system... It's because you don't know how to use the tools at hand, that it is less productive... and sorry, but I find OSx a lot of useless blingbling on a simple BSD [Darwin] shell, not that impressive...
Photoshop <> Gimp : Suits 99% of the needs of mr average... So I class it as a great piece of OSS

You are acting like: If it costs, it must be better... Most companies think analog: if it's MS it must be good, and if it isn't we get support. The kind of support the OpenSource Community doesn't offer.

That's the whole point... if MS retracts their EU market, the EU forces their economy into a technological disadvantage. The liberal, capitalistic EU would suffer from this, and MS has the power, regardless of 400million inhabitants (copared to 1billion Chinese inhabitants, in a country that's in an industrial boom, god knows how much US inhabitants...). MS is a company that's grown strong enough to withstand this kind of unfair treatment. They don't ask car manufacturers to remove the engine, because certain types of cars only take certain engines... Why is MS different? Because it has a lot of $$$. I dare say, MS is the EU's milkcow.

 

270M-300M(the estimates vary an incredible ammount) US inhabitants, the only other market that mostly pay for software. In China most software is illegal, so 1Bn inhabitants is unimportant. Like I say, MS pull out of the EU they lose well over 50% of their business. It'd never happen.

 

Companies, even in China can't take the risk of running pirated software...

And I know MS probably won't retreat from the European market, but I'm saying they should...

 

This is really bad news

If Vista gets delayed in Europe, think of the effect it will have on Business Productivity.

Europe will miss out on all the frequent crashes, security exploits, updates gone wrong, and increased amount of tech supported required that comes with a new Windows release. I mean, that could equal millions, if not billions in increased productivity! The horror


What exactly are current versions of Windows (XP et al) missing that businesses need so much? What exactly is it that Vista provides that Europe would be so desperately missing if it's delayed?

Ignoring the whole Capitalism vs Socialism, monoplist issue, have we all drank so much of the Kool-Aide that we believe that we *need* Vista? I mean, it's comming, like it or not, there is no stopping it, but that doesn't mean it's something we desperately are missing.

Each of the many delays of Vista, has the world's economy collectively groaned for all the lost productivity gains, the vanished dollars?


With Globalization, it's actually nice to see a Governmental Elected Body actually flex (or try to) some muscle against a corporate Entity. Ultimately it really doesn't make a difference one way or another, but silly me, I like the idea of the "people" being in control, and not "business".

(PS. "Giving people what they need" isn't a good excuse for monopoly. Imagine you had a software product, that you sold for good money, to average consumers. Microsoft could *kill* you, in a moment, just by releasing a competitor bundled with windows. If M$ throws in an anti-virus program as part of windows, goodbye norton, symantec etc. Even if it's not actually better. It can simply ride on the coat-tails of Windows.) If media player and IE were seperate downloads that you had to go out and get (even if still "free"), the browser market would be a *very* different story.)

Aggies

 

Hi,

I'm entirely happy with this, on the general principle that Microsoft need limiting because their monopolistic behaviour is detrimental to everyone. If they're slapped with a ruling, it should bloody well stick. Personally I would like to see them hit a lot harder - forcibly broken up into separate companies, for a start - but I'm not going to hold my breath on this under the current US junta.

Waiting for a marginally-less-evil version of the operating system doesn't bother me. I'm not one of the losers who'll stand in line for a day and a half for tickets to the premiere of a movie because primacy is somehow special. Sensible sysadmins will wait at least a year for the problems which absolutely will be found in Vista to calm down; this is nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with general principles of software maturity. Personally, I upgrade the OS when I'm forced to and let the Americans find the bugs.

Phil

 

What will people miss? Well, talk Vista only programs, which will surely be developed as soon as Vista is out.

And the delays are equal for the entire world, but, if Vista gets released elsewhere and not in the EU, then the EU has a competitive disadvantage, which will cost European companies.

And I agree on your Globalisation stance... I'm all in favour of power to the people, but your conclusion is quite wrong, because "the people" don't care about IE integration, they don't care about WMP... Well, actually they do, because they all use it, and they will miss it. You seem to forget that Mr Average isn't a Bit-tech reading PC enthousiast, it's a person who just want their PC to work, nothing more, nothing less...

 

On that note, talk about the XP only programs that would give one business an advantage over another that used a Windows98 version of the same program or a similar Mac program.

Maybe you're seeing something I'm not seeing (please tell me what it is) but, in the business I work for, what gives us a competitive advantage is not the software we use (half of which is proprietary anyway) - it's our buying power, the size of our buying group, the business alliances we have, our customer relations, our staff, and wise business choices. The general manger gets lost when he accidentally moves the task bar (then he generally calls me (though I locked that now)). He doesn't care what OS we use (we still have some Pentium machines running 95 ) as long as it works. If I were to convince him to change to Linux it would cause less disruption to the business than our current renovations (especially if even half of our suppliers also changed).

 

IIRC Autodesk Inventor is one of those... And, altough I'm not entirely sure, the CNC (CAD/CAM) program we use at school is too.

If your buisness starts to leap behind on a technological field, don't you think that gives it a disadvantage? I'm not saying it is true for the specific buisness you work in (altough you underestimate the move to OSS), but I'm sure there are buisnesses which will "suffer".

 

Calling Microsoft a monopoly is probably true, and saying things like "US Junta" might your e-peen feel good, but at the end of the day, thats rhetoric. MS is a monopoly because no one else has figured out how to deal with it, and the United States has something close to zero to do with it, but again, I know this is I Hate America Century in Europe, so go right ahead.

The barriers to entry in the OS market are high, but not insurmountable. The space industry is a good example; Lockmart & Boeing eat a billion dollars just to provide an astronaut a tissue, but look at all the little mom & pop ventures that just arent existing but are thriving! Why? Because they had vision, motivation, and cunning. You would wish to break up a multinational company (which would destroy billions in wealth and abruptly trash a stable global OS market) just because nobody has had the vision and drive necessary to unseat the goliath? That, comrade, is laziness, and not to mention simply malicious.

There's no consensus, as its something thats changed since I started college and now remarkably fast, but theres thought that monopolies are never 'natural' any longer. There are too many billions of dollars sitting in too many billionaire companies and individuals pockets that are burning to go forth and create even more wealth. In the old days, no one could hope to rival, say, Bell. No longer true. A billionaire could buy an electric utility, water utility, or practically pay hardware vendors to make drivers for its OS until a time where its prominent enough they do it out of the need of many of its users. Such people only need a worthy product.

And MS already includes a firewall, btw, and "Wordpad", and basic CD burning functionality. Hell, even file compression! Obviously, bundling with Windows hasn't inhibited any of a dozen firewall software makers, Office, or Nero or WinRAR. Nice try, though.

Bottom line is a couple the above posts are products of exactly the culture I railed against. Blaming it on the imperialist United States, and "evil" (capitalist) business practices. Rich people, and entire nations, don't get to be rich or richer from complaining, they get rich from action.

Oh, and about it being good to see a government beaurocracy attacking a corporate 'entity'.. That's practically called communism, or at the very least, corruption. Government intervention in anything but market failures (of which there practically are none in the developed world right now) creates inefficiency, destroys wealth, slows productivity growth.. And again, that kind of attitude is why EU growth is lagging.

Equal opportunity bashing though: On the flip side, I wouldn't mind of my fellow americans would stop whining about all the cheap illegal mexican labor and do something about it -- like get off their asses and take some el-cheapo community college classes. Then, wouldn't matter what minimum wage is, since skilled labor never gets paid that little anyway. Totally unrelated, just shielding myself from something like "well you just hate europeans", which would give MS-bashers a way to avoid trying to disprove a hundred years of capitalism proving itself

 

I want to say more but we are going in circles Let's all just agree to disagee.

 

eu is teh sux

If there isnt any ie with the install, how the hell am i supposed to download firefox?

 

As long as it does not slow down or push back the launch here in the states. I dont care... Your crazy EU laws better not kill the ship date for the rest of us...

 

Vista, is just an os! Its one department within Microsoft it's not an end game for the company.

XP/Vista is a VERY VERY Small portion of Microsoft's profits. Microsoft make most of its money through licensing. I.e. XP/Vista a whopping $150.00 USD but Office 2003/2007 230.00 USD through volume licensing. Technet subscriptions $1200.00 USD a year. MSDN subscriptions $800.00 USD a year; $800 to run software for 90 days!!!! The list goes on and on...

Simply stated Microsoft could simply not ship vista to the EU. It would not hurt there bottom line. There core product line that does bring home the bacon would still sell like hot cakes in the EU.

On to something else that seems to be neglected. Microsoft has seen the error in it's ways, and seems to be taking a new direction. After reading various articles and testing there latest addition to server 2003. It seems to me that Microsoft is trying to develop a true enterprise solution. A Domain under which windows/Linux/Unix/Apple all co-exist. As of server 2003 R2, Kerboros is now 95% integrated gone is the need for samba to share NTFS resources to a Unix client. The whole 2007 suit will adopt "PowerShell" under which a single logon script can serve your windows/Unix/Linux client. Not to mention System Center 2007 offers ITL in a box using the MOF guidelines. Big buisness doesn't need Office 2007, WMP, or IE... hell 90% write there own apps. There are two reasons Big Business (REAL MONEY) looks to Microsoft...
1. Like it or hate it windows will run on damn near anything!
2. There is no one else when it comes to Enterprise Management... UNIX and Novel try, and there stuff is good. But Microsoft is just better IMO. They offer a complete package. Not to mention every time someone actually creates something better Microsoft buys it and licenses it for distribution ala Groove.

Go ahead remove explorer from your pc... Run Linux b/c you think it cool. M$ is going nowhere while we argue about a CLIENT OS. Microsoft has won the battle over the real money! Enterprise management!

 

glnsize, true, but (just a joke, altough it is true)

Linux is superiour on different things if runs on, eg. Linux runs on a toaster. If it has an embedded controller, a form of Linux will run on it...

 

Here is a summary of M$ 2005 Revenues, I'm assuming it's accurate (from a quick googling):

• Client Software (Windows desktop OS) - $12.2B
• Information Worker (MS Office) - $11.0B
• Servers & Tools (Windows Server, SQL Server, .Net development tools) - $9.9B
• Home & Entertainment (xBox) - $3.3B
• MSN (MSN sites, Search) - $2.3B
• Business Solutions (Great Plains, SMB business) - $0.8B
• Mobile/Embedded (Windows Mobile) - $0.3B

The OS revenues seem to be equal (if not more) than from Office. So I think it's reasonable to say that it's NOT a "very very small" portion of their business?

Aggies

 

The QT media player and Safari browser you mention can be easily removed without any consequences to OS X. Microsoft has made (or tried to make) IE and WMP a part of the OS such that it doesn't properly work without it, and they made very difficult to remove. I think that's a pretty key difference.

I think the EU issue is also about not providing enough information to allow development of competing streaming media service software for the platform. Maybe that's unnecessary now as Real can just develop their own Linux or BSD-based service. The server market isn't dominated by MS yet so it shouldn't be hard to find hosts that can offer that service.

I'm skeptical that MS delaying Vista's introduction to the EU would hurt Europe's economy. I don't understand that thinking at all. I'm not convinced that the delay hurts MS either.

 

but thats not true, theres plenty of media players that work fine on windows, same as with browsers.

and if you dont wanna use ie, you dont have to ether. most people are happy with wmp and ie.
with apple having browsers and media players, they are there its the same as on windows it means people are less likley to replace it with their own one as it comes with one that works and does what they need. thats what most people want, out of the box and 100% working.

not sitting there with a pc without a media player or internet browser on it at all, without ie how can they go and download another browser to install? or media player for that matter.

people who want to use a diffrent product will activly go and get another browser/whatever but if everyone is forced to it just makes it more of a headache, especialy for the people with little or no computer experince.

and to be honest most people are familiar with ie and wmp so they will want that(the average user anyway)so i assume companys like dell will probably put it on there anyway, or atleast the install file.

what i dont understand is do they remove it totaly nad just ship the os without the porgrams or put them on but allow them to be totaly removed?