Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The
king of forced software bundling, Microsoft, is all of a sudden acting
like a reformed citizen, enabling users to remove Internet Explorer 8
from the latest build of Windows 7 Beta. The build includes a dialogue
box that easily enables users to enable and disable functions by
ticking and unticking check boxes.
A box
called Windows Features allows users to select whether they want a host
of software features integrated with their operating including games,
media features, IE8 and others.
This functionality certainly isn't included in my earlier build of Windows 7 I have running on my netbook.
According
to bloggers who have tried Windows 7 Beta build 7048, the removal also
requires two reboots and an additional configuration of the system
before it is completed. What's more, the removal is apparently just an
erasing of the IE8 executable file rather than a complete program
uninstall.
Since Microsoft claims that most of the programs it
bundles with Windows versions like IE8 are vertically integrated with
the operating system, claims that a completely clean removal of IE8 are
sort of plausible.
Then again, the ease with which other popular
browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera can be installed
and completely uninstalled without problems, begs the question as to
why Microsoft would bother to so tightly integrate its own browser in
the first place. It would be hard to claim, for instance that IE8 has
superior functionality or performance than say Firefox 3.
The
answer to Microsoft action is that the company is accutely aware of the
opposition it has faced in the past from EU anti-competition
regulators, in particular the European Commission. Even for Microsoft,
billions of dollars in fines and the overheads involved with
continually being ordered to modify its products to comply with local
laws is an impost the software company can no longer afford.
It
is interesting that the move to enable partial unbundling of IE8 from
Windows 7 comes as news is breaking that relations between Microsoft
and the EU regulators are on the improve, with the EU indicating that
intends to relax its previously eagle eye scrutiny of the software
giant's activities.
Some screen shots of the IE8 removal facility can be viewed here.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
