Having internet browsing capabilities should be expected of an operating system. A machine that can't browse the internet these days is useless to 99 percent of it's users. Almost everything I do on my machine involves an internet connection. It's painful when the rare net outage happens.

If Chrome, Firefox and Opera want in, put a CD in the box, along with all the other pack-in software.

How is IE8 anyways? I'm thinking about ditching FireFox because I'm getting tired of the problems it has. Chrome is no good for me. IE8 is looking nice, but I haven't run any of the betas or RCs.

Quote: Original post by d000hg
Yes but its competitors don't sell their browsers. I view MS make money from IE because it makes the OS better if it comes with an internet browser installed; it also allows them to force new technologies on the web by making them de facto standards.

They all free now, but that's the whole point! Netscape was originally not free, don't forget.

Obviously, now that they're all free, Microsoft can't start charging for theirs...

Quote: Original post by Codeka

Quote: Original post by d000hg
Yes but its competitors don't sell their browsers. I view MS make money from IE because it makes the OS better if it comes with an internet browser installed; it also allows them to force new technologies on the web by making them de facto standards.

They all free now, but that's the whole point! Netscape was originally not free, don't forget.

Obviously, now that they're all free, Microsoft can't start charging for theirs...

I'm pretty sure that the cost of IE is included in the cost of Windows. So even the ones who won't use it, still has to pay for it.

Quote: Original post by Haladria
I'm pretty sure that the cost of IE is included in the cost of Windows. So even the ones who won't use it, still has to pay for it.

What does that even mean? It's not like the price of Windows would drop without IE. It's more akin to a buy X, get Y free deal. You can't take that kind of deal and then suddenly demand that Y is worth some amount of money that you overpaid, and that you're entitled to it because you don't want Y.

Quote: Original post by Promit

Quote: Original post by Haladria
I'm pretty sure that the cost of IE is included in the cost of Windows. So even the ones who won't use it, still has to pay for it.

What does that even mean? It's not like the price of Windows would drop without IE. It's more akin to a buy X, get Y free deal. You can't take that kind of deal and then suddenly demand that Y is worth some amount of money that you overpaid, and that you're entitled to it because you don't want Y.

Exactly. By this logic, you "paid" for Notepad, and you "paid" for Wordpad, and you "paid" for Calc, and you "paid" for Cmd. Load of bollocks.


"MS preinstalling Notepad violates my right to choose my own text editor! Burn them at the stake".

Bull. Freaking. Shit.

Quote: Original post by Gametaku
Remove IE 8

Quote:
The latest test builds of Windows 7, Microsoft's successor to its Vista operating system, allows users to completely delete Internet Explorer from their systems. While previous versions of Windows allowed you to disable IE, it appears the Windows 7 will be the first to allow you to get rid of the actual IE 8 executable.

Personally I'm sure that's not enough, OS X can come with Safari and most Linux distros come with firefox as the only useful options. However until windows comes with firefox, or maybe chrome Microsoft would be to anti-competitive

Welcome slashbot. I see you are distorting history, allow me to clarify some things.


* Netscape Navigator was free to download as of November 2004
* Internet Explorer was released in August 2005, and had to be purchased.
* Internet Explorer 2.0 was free to download and released in November 2005
* Netscape Navigator was notoriously standards incompliant, not even supporting CSS but instead going with something completely different until it was obvious that no one cared, and by the time they bothered to implement CSS it was too late, no one cared about Netscape anymore because it was a bloated piece of buggy crap that crashed like crazy.


The notion that IE destroyed browser competitiveness and forces people to offer their browsers for free is utter nonsense, since Netscape was free to download for almost an entire year before Internet Explorer even existed.

IE won the browser wars because Netscape was a piece of crap. Ask any web developer what browser they would prefer to design for back in 2001: IE6 or NN4? Microsoft made the better product back then.

Sure it's easy to look at the 8-year old IE6 and say it's a piece of crap now. But honestly, how many pieces of software do you use on a regular basis that are 8 years old?

Quote: Original post by benryves

Quote: Original post by evolutional
Don't most of Microsoft help viewers all use IE under the covers? I know when I installed the IE8 beta all my MSDN and SQL Server Books Online pages from document explorer all got screwed up.

HTML Help (.chm) files use IE's rendering engine, as do mail clients such as Windows Live Mail Desktop.

Quote: They'll be removing media player and the start bar next.

Windows XP Edition N is a special version that doesn't come with Media Player or related or components to placate - once again - the EU.

There's not a single reported sale of XP-N to an end-user either. Way to protect the consumer from features, EU!

Honestly the only people complaining about this are the freetards who wouldn't even buy Windows in the first place and generally refuse to pay for any software. The whineyest wheel gets the oil I guess.

I have to agree. Who cares if IE is installed? Whenever I reinstall windows it takes me a few minutes to just throw chrome or firefox over it, I set one of them to default and only use IE when something defaults to it.

And when that does happen, guess what I do? Use it. Its a web browser, deal with it?

This whole topic is an example of overreaction.

Quote: Original post by Hodgman

Quote: Original post by Moe
How does MS even make money on IE?

Business is not always about making money yourself - sometimes it's about stopping your competitors from making money.

Or could it possibly be that users expect an operating system to come with an internet browser nowadays?

Naw... it's got to be an evil conspiracy. Yep. Makes way more sense.

An update on the situation.

Windows 7: You Can Disable Every Major Feature

Quote: Microsoft noted that due to all the anti-trust dealings, user feedback, and browser-OS integration controversies, it has decided to allow users to turn off almost everything, except the core OS itself.

That'll be the next thing they target. Why should users be forced to use windows if they purchase a windows PC? They should ship with a version of linux as well, so the user has a choice. [grin]