E-mail, photo programs stripped from Windows 7

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10048142-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0

They're gonna direct you to download the Windows Live programs instead if you want that stuff.

 

Well the cynical part of me says this is because they want more $ and they'll probably charge extra for each download...

But I guess they're also paying attention to the fact that the way windows comes bundled with everything you need isn't very healthy in terms of competition...

 

i really don't think they suddenly decided to become fairplay and be nice to the competition

 

That news is fine by me...don't care much about those programs....I'm all for less system resources to be used.

 

I don't think that's the competitive focus - it's probably a realization that some enterprises are a little leery about jettisoning the copies of Win2K they've been running on for 9 years, in part because that means having to deal with getting their proprietary email systems to integrate into a brand-new OS that, already having an email system, is going to be a bit "hostile" to the integration; making email a wholly separate module means that it'll be easier to convince enterprises to step up to a new version of the MS OS without having to deal with the ancillary issues of email and whatnot. In that respect, it'll make MS more competitive - I doubt very seriously if they, or any company that's worth its salt, really gives a hoot about the competition (those that do, are basically either lying, or are poorly run businesses trying to gimp along by hobbling everyone to a set of standard play-nice rules).

 

The article made it sound like they want to integrate the programs with their online services -- Windows Live -- and they can't really do that kind of integration if they bundle the programs with Windows because of antitrust issues.

 

Why don't they just make an operating system. Lets you install programs, install drivers, tweak system settings, etc.

No extra junk. Just a minalistic OS.

Let us download the programs and drivers and tweak settings the way we want.

Then Windows 7 will be what it needs to be.

 

That would be great for those people who know what they are doing but when you have people who have come to expect those things included with the OS, it would not be. Not everyone is technically inclined or want to be.

 

I would prefer that way too Greg...but Joyscant makes a good point.....

 

Fine by me - I've never used a single one of those programs in 5 years since starting to run XP. So long as they keep the basic productivity programs (WordPad, NotePad, MSPaint, Calculator), I'm fine with cutting at least most of the others ones.

I guess it comes down to that an OS needs to have a certain number of basic programs included out of the box so you aren't left able to do almost nothing until you download your own programs - Windows could probably cut it down to just Notepad, really. But it's also nice to have a few extra relatively simple ones for quick editing (Calculator, WordPad, Calculator), and if you throw in ones that are very commonly used (Windows Media Player) that's fine as well. But programs that aren't that commonly used and aren't in some way quite important (Windows Movie Maker), making them downloadable extras (or programs not installed by default) is probably a good idea.

 

Ay. That's what I was referring to...

 

That's fine by me, I use Ifanview as my default picture viewer and used to use Mozilla Thunderbird as my default email client but I haven't gotten around to setting it up on my new machine.

 

Now all we need is for PC manufactures not to add any bloatware.