Wednesday, September 24th 2008
Windows 7 Will Not Include Email, Photo and Movie Programs
Talking to CNET, Microsoft has confirmed it will not be including any built-in programs for Email, Photo Editing and Movie Making. Instead the Windows Live Suite (found here) will be available to download if consumers still wish to use the relevant Microsoft Products.
Source:
CNET
Windows Live general manager Brian Hall said Microsoft made the decision to remove the tools from Windows for several reasons, including a desire to issue new operating system releases more quickly than it has in the past. The move also removes the confusion of offering and supporting two different programs that perform essentially similar functions.
"It makes it much cleaner," Hall said.
Lastly, he said, making the Windows Live tools completely separate from the operating system paves the way for Microsoft to work selectively with specific partners.
"We can do things with specific partners to enable really great experiences that might be hard in Windows," Hall said.
Antitrust rules make it hard for Microsoft to tie operating system features to specific services.
76 Comments on Windows 7 Will Not Include Email, Photo and Movie Programs
So you made absolutely no difference, caused more polution and made MS carry over the cost of those fines to its clients, costing everyone money ... great work EU-commissioners, glad I'm paying your overinflated, undeserved pay- and pensioncheques.
;)
I think people don't realize one reason why Internet explorer is so integrated into the system is because the rendering engine is used in a lot of other places; like the control panel and the massive help file.
And now they get bitched at for included things people will use. If I buy an operating system there are several things I would like to do right off the bat, none of which are to go download winamp and pretend I like it better than WMP. Or complain about mspaint.exe, which uses up a whole 335kb of space. There are people where I work that applaud Apple because of the editing programs that ship with the computer, but Microsoft isn't allowed to do the same thing. Security companies complain about the firewall, but we all know what people will say if it shipped without one. "What kind of POS is this? No media player, no firewall, can't look at pictures, can't go on the internet. Jesus I can't even play solitaire!"
There is nothing stopping people from installing Paint.net, VLC, Irfanview, Notepad+, the Power Calculator, Trillian, WinRAR, or Firefox on their own after a windows install. +1 Funny for the antitrust rulings
But that reminds me, I would also like WMP kept, lol.
I don't remember people ever complaining about this. In fact, before IE, everybody used Mosaic and Netscape -- people were just fine without IE. I'm not saying that Microsoft doesn't deserve a part of the browser market, just that the argument that "IE needed to be included with Windows" isn't exactly true. This is not a good thing -- IE is a web browser. It never should have been used for these things. To me, it's indicative of sloppy coding practicies. I agree with some of your points here -- people are unnecessarily complaining about MS for the same things that they applaud Apple for. However, if it's Apple's iLife suite that you're talking about, isn't it possible to still get an Apple without it? Even if they do kind of push it on the consumer, it's still possible to get the MacOS without those programs.
I wish MS would do the same thing -- I personally think the idea of "Windows Live Suite" featuring these programs would be a great idea. I wouldn't even mind if they kinda "pushed" it on you too -- for instance, when you first installed there'd be a few boxes or reminders or whatever to download it and install.
When I buy a new computer, it isn't Microsoft's stuff that I'm worried about. It's software that gets bundled that I don't like. Most of the time I don't even boot a new PC, I just pop in my install disk and format the damn thing.