No Windows 7 Upgrades for Europe

[pakardbell486dx2]

"......we don't want the customer on the phone with support,” said Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Product Management, to the gadget blog."

Words speak for itself

 

[avericia]

I don't understand why people want the stupid upgrade so bad? I would rather have the full version for the upgrade price anyway because I would never do an upgrade without a full install ever. I think Europe gets the better deal if they end up get full versions for upgrade prices.

That's just for my home box because I game and os upgrade bugs are not worth the time saved.

And yes I have Vista but I do not want to deal with the upgrade install restrictions every time I want to reformat down the road.

But now if the full versions of 7 don't come with IE at the start that's just going to make things even more of a pain in the ass so i might just deal with vista for a while until they get this crap straight.

I have had such a horrible experience with vista overall I don't know if i'm going to try 7 right when it comes out because I have so little faith in microsoft at this point.

 

[Platypus]

Well, the users posting comments about everyone in the EU getting what they deserve is a little ridiculous. It wasn't the people; it was their mentally-unstable elected officials.

The same could be said about the United States. I assure you we aren't all as stupid as our politicians make us out to be.

I would say Microsoft is, in a sense, rebelling against the EU a little bit on this one, for all the right reasons. "You mean if we include our IE, we have to include a bunch of unassociated products as well? ...Okay, we won't include IE. See how far that gets you." It's a little childish, but it's probably the only way to get those EU officials to realize why their lawsuit was incredibly stupid. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one pans out in the future.

 

[tommysch]

MS should be charging them the FULL PRICE for the full version. They would get what they asked for.

Recently they banned the import of seals because they dont like the way we kill them (humanly), but they still torture ducks to make some foie-gras. It goes to show the hypocrisy of their leaders...

So MS should fight back and get every cent of what they have been fined to. Someone need to show those slackers who the boss is.

 

[jfplopes]

I'm an EU citizen and the last MS vs EU battle was a joke.
Let me just state this. For those that remember, back in the days when Netscape existed (you know, the one that started it all), it made sense to sue Microsoft for one and one only reason.
That one reason was that the NET was still not popular enough and there weren't that many devices outside pcs that could ride the waves. There was no one caring for standards, and Microsoft with its huge user base
saw the opportunity of using IE as a way to take and hold the Internet forever with their proprietary formats. Their intention was that in the future people would have to resolt to Microsoft proprietary formats in whatever platform. Microsoft mistake was to tie their formats to their system in a strategy of "If you want to get the best of the web you need to use a microsoft based platform"
That is why ActiveX was first created (only compatible with MS Oses) and one of the reasons MS tried so hard for their Word formats to become standard. Microsoft had some sucess but probably not as much as they expected. Standards have become way more important and the fact is Microsoft strategy of building formats tied to thei OSes and that were not cross-platform compatible back fired on them as
other companies like Adobe took a hold of the net with Adobe Flash and the rise of the net applications like Google Docs, Gmail and so on. They did have some sucess making Windows Media Video one of the most widly used video formats on the web for streaming.
The format wars is not over but the big browser war is. People want to access everything everywhere so they demand every company to build support for any kind of device or else that format will simply die.
Thus a browser is no longer "the mean" to fight the big battle. Any browser should provide all the basic features so that websites can be reached in any device, so we can no longer have "IE only" sites. Or ActiveX embed objects that run only on Microsoft OSes.
What you need is formats that run anywhere.
That is why this MS vs EU battle is a joke. No one cares if IE is the default browser or not. Actually other OSes also use the same strategy of bundling one browser as default.
MS knows well that what people demand today is to have "something" that allows surfing the web out of the box.
MS also knows that the browser is unimportant today. They know that people will use the pre-bundled browser just as a means to get to their prefered browser site and download another one.

The thing is the browser no longer can be used to gain a monopoly. It is as important as say Notepad.
MS strategy is clear. Remove IE from Windows 7 and wait for the european customer rage against the EU for not having a means to surf the web by default.
The EU knows well that having no browser is worst, but obviously it can not demand MS to have competitors browsers in the OS simply because it will only open the door for one rightfull questiong from MS.
"What browsers should we put on then? and why those and not others?"
It is an embarasing situation for the EU now and just shows has so many times the decision makers are out of pace of what is actually happening in the market.

 

[Guest]

1-EU never asked MS to unbundle IE, they asked MS to either offer alternatives or remove it.

2-MS has just accepted to offer alternatives through a multi-choice popup window appearing at first startup of Windows 7

3-Consumers win. No need to thank us.