Russia said to probe Microsoft over XP halt
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Microsoft is reportedly facing another antitrust inquiry, this time from the Russians.
According to a Reuters report Thursday, regulators there argue that Microsoft is violating Russian antitrust law by limiting supplies of Windows XP while demand exists and forcing people to buy Windows Vista.
Microsoft has largely stopped selling Windows XP for use on new computers, although it is still allowed in some emerging markets as well as for very low-cost machines, such as Netbooks.
The software maker says it has yet to be notified of the complaint.
"Microsoft has not yet received notice of any new investigation," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said in a statement to CNET News. "However, we will cooperate with any inquiry and remain committed to full compliance with Russian law."
In April, Russia said it was looking into whether Microsoft deserved closer scrutiny under its antitrust laws.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
This is just great; now, how about extending the "antitrust inquiry" by the Russian Federation as to what happened with IBM's OS/2 Warp which (it is understood) is very much still in use by "the Russians"!
See the below attached link:
http://en.ecomstation.ru/solutions/?action=solutions
Also, instead of "fines" that the EU imposes; have them work at the special "hotels rooms" in Siberia!
Cool!
Can you provide proof that the OS used by more banks worldwide that any other is dead? OS/2 Warp 4 is alive and kicking with eComStation supporting it on IBM's behalf.
Cool!
*Well about as much sense as complaining about OS/2 failure does.
You need to make a little sense yourself.
When governments need money because they won't accept the policy of tax and spend is unsustainable...they looters come out.
Ford is not an open source company. Neither is Microsoft. And being Open Source is completely out of the issue here. The issue here is if a company can be forced to keep selling a product just because there's a demand for it. I can understand both sides of that argument, but the error here is that the same logic is NOT being applied to all companies, just to one. No other company is being forced to keep selling a product just "because there is demand for it". And that's especially true when a product would require free "maintenance" (in the form of fixes) and is patently obsolete from critical points of view such as security.
If that look under the hood is not sufficient, then tell me what is.
There are two major reasons for all that investigations:
* it's much easier to copy XP than Vista and there is enough lobbying in the high places by the business who run on a 100% counterfit software
* oil is still less than $100, and they are running quite a deficit right now, so any source of extra income will do
So Microsoft's discontinuing of Windows XP for Vista is more akin to all the gas stations switching from regular gas to ethanol fuel - even though ethanol will not run cars as well as petrol.
If some companies complain to governments about volations, MS should countersuit with a piratecy charge.
Make the complains prove that they are legit.
Well no ****?
Why would you continue to promote and sell a dated OS when you have a new one that's been out 3 years and another one on the way.
Lets sue every company who discontinues a product for a new one while its in demand shall we?
I can't possibly see how this is 'Anti-trust' to stop selling an older operating system in favor of a new one, even if there is 'demand' for it.
What is legal in the US may not be legal in other countries where laws are not purchased by corporations with campaign contributions.
Apple discontinued OSX and there was still a demand for it maybe they should get a lawsuit too.
But guess what? Once this state of monopolist dominance is reached, the same (conservative leaning) people who championed the U.S. approach of 'protect the consumer' will be the same ones who will complain about 'excess regulation' when the government now has to step in to stop the monopolists from abusing the consumers. (Because competition had already been killed.)
Which is why this Reagan era 'protect the consumer' antitrust policy is a crock. It was intellectually dishonest and was merely a means for the giant corporations to establish monopolistic dominance.
I want my Zombie Stalin!
;-)
Wonder how many tracking bots, keyboard loggers and spyware would be included until it didn't resemble the original product.
I use XP on my surveilance products - lean and mean - still works phenomally.
If MS is manipulating the market of a "Soft" product for the sole intention of forcing a more expensive product on its consumers, there may be a case there.
But here's the question: If there is still strong demand for a product, why wouldn't MS fill that demand? What is their true rationale for limiting/discontinuing XP? The R&D is already spent. XP Pro retail is still fetching a premium price and has to be super profitable. I think they need to pull this crap to cover development costs of Vista on the books.
Vista wasn't even bad... Use it yourself on something that wasn't built in 90 - 2001
Microsoft, and every other software company, discontinues old products for two very legitimate reasons:
1) the support burden becomes unmanagable if old products are never retired
2) hardware and applications continue to advance. An old operating system is static (except for bug fixes). The way an operating system advances is by creation of a new version. Gradually, the older versions become irrelevant to the vast majority of the market. If someone wishes to maintain the older version into infinity they are no longer defined as a customer. They are defined as a "hobbiest" and they are on their own.
It's not called antitrust. It's called progress.
What the unnamed guy was saying was that XP preinstalled computers are being phased out of the market now...as with the case in Russia, the XP pc supply is low and now all computers come preloaded with Vista which you have to agree is a resource hog (I am writing this on my vista laptop which is currently using 1.9 GB RAM with only 1 Browser window open and only the basic background services running) and also due to the change in GUI, people just don't like it...some people are unwilling to change until proven to them. On top of that XP is easier to manage and customize. That's what he meant by "Vista being forced down your throats"
Vista is not that bad but I find developing in Java and Visual Studio on vista a bit annoying. IMO, i would rather stick to XP or get Win 7 as soon as it comes out. OTOH, my Mac does a better job for developing java based apps.
My point still remains.
Every company phases out their old products when new products come out Microsoft has been more generous then most with this and they are getting targeted.
Vista appears to be a resource hog but it really isn't.
The reason why the memory usage looks so high is because it pre caches commonly used programs which in turn creates faster program start ups. I can assure you on a decent system with 3-4gb of RAM (which every system comes with these days) with a dual boot between XP and Vista you can't even tell the difference.
This has been my experience.
It is that simple. You can't demand that Microsoft sells you a produc they don't want to sell anymore.
Here's the answer to your last question: because there's a cost to do it. A product might be in high demand, but it may be unsafe to use. Keeping it at an acceptable security level has exponential cost with time. You reach one point where it is no longer profitable to sell it.
According to your logic, companies should keep selling lead painted toys if there's demand for them.
It is that simple. You can't demand that Microsoft sells you a produc they don't want to sell anymore.
Here's the answer to your last question: because there's a cost to do it. A product might be in high demand, but it may be unsafe to use. Keeping it at an acceptable security level has exponential cost with time. You reach one point where it is no longer profitable to sell it.
According to your logic, companies should keep selling lead painted toys if there's demand for them.
@monkeyfun: check your computer, there's something wrong with it. My Vista box is using 1.2GB and I'm using Word, Excel, Outlook and IE with 20 tabs open, plus some other tools and stuff. There's some other resource hog in there besides Vista.
I wasn't complaining about Vista and it depends on how much memory you have.
I have 4gb's in my system.
Apple & Linux mindset: Everything is okay no matter how unfair as long as it only hurts Microsoft.
Microsoft forced OEMs to use Windows in PCs, then the Justice Dept stopped that practice. But what they got from this illegal strategy was momentum and it seems that crime does pay sometimes because Windows is one of the biggest selling products in the world mainly due to having deals where Windows was bundled with PCs. In the early days, if OEMs bundled other OSes, then they didn't get the same price for Windows thereby forcing OEMs to use Windows exclusively.
The result is that consumers are now left with an OS that is extremely expensive, now up to half the price of a new PC because Microsoft eradicated nearly all competition for OSes on PCs illegally.
You don't see Microsoft being the dominant OS in mobiles do you? The reason is that it is a level playing field and Microsoft was not able to do illegal deals with Mobile OEMs for a number of reasons including the watchful eye of antitrust bodies.
" an OS that is extremely expensive, now up to half the price of a new PC"
I wonder what OS you are talking about? It sure isn't Microsoft Windows. OEM's pay a tiny fraction of the retail price. Dell was recently quoted that they spend nearly $15 per license on their netbooks for XP.
2 x $15 = .... $30. The Dell mini cost a LOT more than $30.
Do you have any numbers to back up your claim or is it just an exaggeration to make a point?
"The result is that consumers are now left with an OS that is extremely expensive, now up to half the price of a new PC because Microsoft eradicated nearly all competition for OSes on PCs illegally."
Now tell us where you can buy winblows for $15? I've been seeing it for roughly a couple hundred bucks, depending on which of the 666 flavors (ok, maybe it's only 5 or 7 flavors) you want to enslave yourself with. Netbooks count as computers and they run for roughly around $400. $200/$400 = 1/2, which reads HALF. See how that works?
-hey im lauren and i am a pc
-you drive a VW and think a mac is too expensive, you are an idiot and i don't care, now go away
and about the moronic comparisons with the VHS tapes and Ford Escort and crap...
almost every auto maker has an alternative to Escort that uses the same fuel and a lot of same parts(internal, not cosmetic). so you can just buy another brand when your car is dead, or buy third party parts to fix it. you can also transfer all your eye candy and accessories like gps and stuff to your new car.
DVD, even though more expensive, has a much better a/v quality over VHS (which is basically crap.. seriously i still don't understand why people didn't prefer betacam over it). so it actually is a sound investment. and you are not stuck with one brand, you can choose from a huge list.
XP uses microsofts own proprietary file system which means unless you are ready to do a lot of file transfers over network, you are stuck with your current operating system. if you upgrade to the next version(vista), you will keep getting the tech support and updates (if it can be actually called support), but you will pay a lot of money for a new OS that isn't much of an upgrade performance wise, or unless you LOVE degraded performance due to eye candy (which is really a cheap knock-off of OS X from 2002), cosmetically. the problem is that if you don't buy vista, you are doomed to be outdated. if you are "cheap" and install linux, or "elitist" and buy a mac, you won't have full access to your ntfs disks, not to mention all the software you "bought" for xp. i know there are little programs that let you read/write ntfs partitions but MS does not grant permission for write support, so those programs are not legit. once you use windoze, you are locked to it.
now some idiots are thinking about fat32. my friends, that file system is even more outdated than windows ME. it doesn't even support files over 4gb. to any power user, fat32 is not even an option. and there are no user rights over files, its one big security pot hole.
about the third party software, i know mac stuff doesn't work on linux either, but its a lot easier for software developers to port their software since they are both *nix. unless they used platform independent code libraries in the first place, then it should be easy to port to all of them.
when xp support dies completely, people will have to upgrade to vista, or be stuck with the world's most horribliest (its so bad, its not even a word) OS security. half the planet is using XP, when support dies, cyber-world will turn into a hacker sausage fest/heaven. to clarify, XP is the most distributed OS of all times, and so its like a dart board that pops up at any random location that a dart is thrown at randomly.
unless windows 7 comes out soon to replace vista, and is up to all this hype about performance and compatibility, MS is going to pay a lot more fines for anti-trust... and they should, its bill's and that 800 pound gorilla steve's fault that they couldn't see ahead.
"It must be remembered that other countries can have real anti trust laws that are not controlled by their corporations as the US is.
What is legal in the US may not be legal in other countries where laws are not purchased by corporations with campaign contributions." true, true. even though all the countries are corrupted to some degree, this applies to MS 100% since they had nothing to do with politics over there. thats why i said bill and steve will have to suck up to other governments as well.
Windows XP is world's best operating system than Vista! More EASY and FASTER than Vista!
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Better to do: DO NOT BUY VISTA!!! People will get pi**ed off on Vista operating system. Often blue screen crash! Vista is 100% FAILURE and UNSTABLE! Windows Vista SUCKS too much and ugly!
Windows XP will stay FOREVER and save our headache and save our money! XP is right and very stable than Vista! People love XP very, very MUCH!!!
Microsoft is very dumb and rush ruin people's feelings! Stop that! ENOUGH! XP IS BEST IN THE WORLD!!! BUY XP and ignore from Microsoft suggest force to Vista!
IGNORE Microsoft and buy XP for you to be happier!
Shame on Microsoft!!! STOP BUY VISTA! We support Windows XP FOREVER!!!
"Huh?"
they produce a bloated os called vista that is not backwards compatible with dos based software so as a result no one will buy it . so they force it upon us by restricting our options to buy XP which has proven itself so no wonder the russians are miffed so are we. whoat is microsofts problem there is a demand for xp why not accomodate it people
will not replace all their exspensive software just to suit microsoft . they are morons if they think otherwise.
But seriously, since when is anyone "forced" to buy Vista? There's no shortage of corporations or government agencies that are motoring along just fine with XP.
And since when do Russians buy legal software in sufficient quantities to matter?
Why would they want Windows anyways, when Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux are out there for free? Heck, even my local JiffyLube runs Kubuntu on their entire system!
1. About illegal software in Russia: Definetly it is big problem in our country, but I know Russian goverment made a great company against piracy last year. Russia became a third country in the world by growth rate of selling MS products and any people say that it was made by pressure of the MS lobby.
2. About WinXP: I will speak about my company. Our company could afford to buy WinXP for clients computers only 2 years ago , when economy situation was much better. Now company is struggling with financial crisis and if MS stop supporting or selling WinXP, it will be extra cost for company.
P.S. For those who is still believe in communism in Russia, it 's so funny, so I even don't know what to say for them. Open your eyes!!! I think it doesn't help.
I will not answer anymore, I have to work.
1. I'm really not interested in going there as all countries have issues with illegal software.
2. Your company could afford ex-pee a couple of years ago when the economy was better, but can't afford to upgrade now and you expect our pity? It's called "lock-in" maybe you should have investigated this better before taking the leap. You've made your bed, now lie in it.
- by janejim76 June 5, 2009 11:14 PM PDT
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