fuckin' M$ blowing smoke blown

["Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.org>]

    this is more than fair use, but worth the read --and I am too lazy
    and short of time this morning to condense it.

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>>> fuckin' M$ blowing smoke blown

Microsoft claim debunked!  
By Michael Caton 
December 18, 1997 5:54 PM PST 
PC Week Online

When Ronald Reagan's facts were in contradiction with
reality, he would later claim that he "misspoke."  Microsoft
Corp.  misspoke this week when it asserted that Internet
Explorer cannot be removed from Windows 95.

In a letter to the U.S.  Department of Justice and in press
releases issued this week, Microsoft officials said IE 3.0
is an integrated component of the Windows 95 operating
system, as shipped in OSR (OEM Service Release) version 2.
They further asserted that the removal of certain IE DLLs
from OSR 2 would render the operating system unbootable.

PC Week Labs' tests have shown that this is not the case.

Using copies of OSR 2 CDs provided with OEM PCs, we merely
modified four lines in one of the Windows 95 setup files to
prevent IE 3.0 from installing.  This modification had no
impact on the operating system's capabilities or
performance.  Instead of the install script overwriting
Windows 95 DLLs with files from IE 3.0, the original Windows
95 DLLs remained intact.

Moreover, significant OSR 2 features, like the FAT32 file
system, remained intact using our modified install program.

Microsoft would likely disagree, but our experience with
Windows 95 and recent tests of Windows 98 show that the
operating systems are much better suited for corporate
deployment without the browser.

Removing IE 4.0 from Windows 98 in particular eliminates the
very features that will incur the most costs in a corporate
setting:  Active Desktop, channels and the Web-based Windows
System Update.

The Active Desktop user interface, for example, differs
significantly from Windows 95 and will require considerable
user retraining.  If Microsoft prevails and includes IE 4.0
with the shipping version of Windows 98, it is easy enough
to disable Active Desktop using either administration tools
or by modifying the user interface directly.  The end result
will be the same user interface as Windows 95.

With their current focus on entertainment, the channels
feature afforded by IE 4.0 in Windows 98 likewise is not
ready for corporate prime time.

System Update--which uses ActiveX controls to scan a Windows
98 system to determine if it has out-of-date software and
drivers-is compelling in consumer applications but will be a
poor match in a corporate setting.  A better solution than
users upgrading their own systems when they see fit would be
to push the updates to all applicable clients at once, so
that software versions are consistent across large numbers
of clients.


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