I'm amazed at some of these comments. Don't people know that even if Windows ships with media player and IE that the end user isn't forced to use either program? I mean, ever since I started using IE long ago last century, Netscape's browsers and now FireFox (what I'm using at the moment) have co-existed wonderfully well right alongside IE on my desktop. Indeed, even IE7 b2 has no trouble co-existing with Firefox. I guess these facts surprise some people, apparently, especially the people who so oddly believe that buying Windows as Microsoft ships it somehow denies or diminishes the personal choices they can make about the software they choose to run. That's a problem I've never had.

I like this EU judge's questions, and I'd especially like to hear him ask the EC how imposing large fines on Microsoft simply because the EC wants to do so will ever benefit the EU consumer. Microsoft will have no choice but to pass on the cost of the fines in its software pricing--which EU consumers will be forced to pay. So, how's the EU consumer benefit from anything the EC proposes to do? I can't think of one single benefit the proposed actions will bring the EU consumer--not a single one.

I mean, gee, if you just love REAL PLAYER so much--go ahead and install it and use it instead of Media Player--Heh...;) Who are these people kidding?

Last, I can't blame this stupidity completely on the EC, however. After all, aren't they just following suit with the DoJ attack on Microsoft in the US? Hopefully, the EU high courts will have a lot more sense about all of this than the US DoJ proved to have. We'll see...

Will be nice if MS is forced to also release a 'windows VISTA-N' without mediaplayer, if that also would remove the DRM horror you would be left with an OS that might actually be worth getting, even buying if it was priced reasonably!

If only they forced an IE less version of windows.

I think that the networking protocols should be opened, and all the messaging formats, so that software can be made interoperable at least on a network level (i.e., able to implement full Exchange compatibility and so on).

I think any idiot could have seen that the cut down versions would fail, and most would have thought they were a stupid idea anyway, bringing no value to the consumer. Maybe splitting Windows into a core OS + extra functional packages (Internet, Media, etc) might have worked, but not merely removing one application.