Thanks to our glorious overlords on the continent and their proxy war with the US through the medium of anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft, Windows 7 in Europe will ship without Internet Exploder.
Yes, Internet Explorer is a shit browser but there are plenty of websites out there that just don’t work properly with Firefox and other browsers and lots of people that aren’t comfortable with downloading and installing software. Not being able to buy a computer, plug it in and browse the internet without any faffing about will put off so many computer illiterate people from buying a computer and getting themselves online.
Presumably nobody at the European Imperial Commission foresaw any potential problems with this scenario …
European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.
And which browser will they use to get to a website to download a web browser, pray tell?
Technorati Tags: Idiots, Federal Europe, Microsoft, Windows 7, Internet Explorer
is most of the IE code not embedded in windows anyway or is that an MS lie?
I know what you mean, I use firefox for everything apart from 1 site that needs IE and its a big company too 🙁
It’s very tightly embedded into Windows but it is possible to excise the browser from the OS and there are websites out there that will guide you through it. Micro$oft started tightly embedding Internet Exploder into Windows when the European Empire first sued them over it in an attempt to make it an integral part of the operating system and stop them from getting fined for shipping it with Windows again. It didn’t work.
To be honest, whilst I’m not particularly keen on Micro$oft’s business methods or the price they charge for their bloated software, I don’t see the problem with Internet Exploder being shipped with Windows. How many paid-for browsers are there out there? Not many and the only real competition is Firefox and its derivitives which are free, Opera which is free and Safari which is free.
hold on, how will they download it?
my recollection of ftp software in the 90s was quite brutal
phone dialler, does that still ship with windows?
You dont even need Windows nevermind IE!.
Go with Linux, safer, faster, more stable, free!
http://www.ubuntu.com/
Oh and goes without say….we dont need the EUSSR either!.
England OUT!
John, I was more of a Red Hat guy but pedantry aside….
To most people the PC is the grey box that down loads movies, mp3s and, when the wife is out, porno, they have reached such an embedded utilitarian place in our lives that most people dont know or care what runs them, whether it is Mac, Unix or Dos.
I gather you would need to accquire a cd from somewhere to install Linux? It is a very reasonable option for a small local PC shop, you buy in your blank PCs , you build a suitable Linux install for all the hardware and stuff and away you go, no more hassle than installing windows.
But the problem still remains, if i buy a pc with an os on it, i want it to run out of the box, not have to fanny around with it, i guess the way around it is for Dixons or who ever to install IE on it for you after it arrives?
John : remember gcc? 😀
Wouldn’t the PC manufacturers just ship them with an alternative browser pre-installed, like Firefox, and you could then download IE 8 (or 7, if you wished) from the Microsoft website? Or the retailers would throw in a complimentary IE CD-ROM.
Simples!
Incidentally, I couldn’t get your comment form to work in either the Acoo Browser (IE-based) or K-Meleon (Gecko-based like Firefox, and currently my favourite browser). The reason: the security word was truncated and appeared as ‘rampant rabbi’ rather than ‘rampant rabbit’! So I had to resort to IE 8.
That would make sense but i dont see Micro$soft doing that as they would no doubt see it as promoting their rivals superior and free products, the last thing they want.
There is a Plugin for Firefox called “IE TAB”, you can basically open a page inside firefox using the IE engine.
Axel, never heard of gcc! but have heard of redhat, im quite new to Linux but found it far superior, i only use Windows out of necessity for a few programs, which would not be needed for the average user.
One of the best is Linux Mint, it comes with all codecs for playing DVDs and media files etc, built in, and as Ubuntu, Fedora, and countless others, can be downloaded, about 600-700mb, burned as an ISO image to a blank CD, and can be used to boot from via a ‘live CD’ option without making any change whatsoever to your hard drive, with this live option you have a desktop, browser and internet access, so at the very least you want one of these in case your Windows system goes down, and installing these linux systems takes no more than 15-30 minutes and is a simple as ABC, or you can dual boot if you prefer, having Windows plus your Linux system of choice.
http://www.linuxmint.com/
gcc=gnu C compiler, an old gunslingers tool from the dark ages
you are missing the point, your sales line is too complex, does the PC get interweb, does it access hotmail, does it down load tunes, that is all that people want to do
think of it like the difference between pepsi and coke or deisel and petrol cars or gordon brown and donner kebab meat, yes there are differences but no one really cares about them apart from a few sad geeks
btw–I’m a Pepsi guy 😛
Who complained that MS ship IE for the convenience of their customers? No one is losing out financially, because no one pays for browsers as Wonko points out.
Its a buggeration for Microsoft to have to reconfig the OS, for your granny who is going to have to work out how she is going to log on to FoxyBingo.com and for you, dear techie grandson, because you are are going to have to go round an fix it for her.