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Microsoft Striping Features From Windows 8

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

Fully [H]
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
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Well, now that the "Windows Store" is being built into the OS, Microsoft can now start stripping out things that you got included in 7, and charge you for them in 8. They claim it's because they want to offer a simplified edition lineup, but we still have 7 Home Premium and 7 Professional, and 8 and 8 Professional

So, they are removing Media Center & DVD playback, and are going to charge you if you want them.

LINK

What next? I hope 8 fails for so many reasons.
 
....There are many alternatives out there that are fairly inexpensive so I am unsure if this is a troll thread or not...
 
bigdogchris said:
So, they are removing Media Center & DVD playback, and are going to charge you if you want them.

LINK

What next? I hope 8 fails for so many reasons.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought about XP --> Vista/7 about many features. Wikipedia has a list of features removed from XP, with many of them that shouldn't have been removed and has only made certain parts of Windows worse.
 
What's the point of putting technology into the OS, paying royalties on those technologies for EVERY copy of Windows while fewer and fewer people are using these technologies?

Sure I don't like it as I use all of this stuff but I can't argue the business reality of it. I imagine the cost will be pretty cheap, just to cover the royalties mostly.

And if Windows 8 does fail, which from a business standpoint is very unlikely, Vista was perhaps the biggest money making failure of all time, support for declining technologies wouldn't really make any difference.

Things change, and it seems like the people that don't like Windows 8 simply don't that. DVD sales have fallen of a damn cliff and most people who use Windows don't even know what Media Center is.
 
It will be interesting to see if many OEMs, where the vast majority of Windows licenses are sold to consumers, will just preinstall the MCE add-on. So many consumer Windows 7 systems now come with the Home Premium versions that it is hard to imagine those system vendors wanting to take heat from this dumb decision.
 
looks like ole bufodr_t is going to be using windows 7 a good long while
 
pxc said:
So many consumer Windows 7 systems now come with the Home Premium versions that it is hard to imagine those system vendors wanting to take heat from this dumb decision.
Click to expand...

Just like systems with XP that also didn't include DVD in the OS, vendors simply added the codecs with systems. I imagine that for systems with DVD drives this will be how it's done.

But there's absolutely NOTHING dumb about this decision. This is shrewed and smart business and there's always winners and losers as a result of these kinds of decisions but I think Microsoft is being upfront and honest here. There's simply not enough people using these technologies to warrant the royalties for EVERY copy of Windows sold. And it appears that the facts are backing them up. DVD sales have fallen off a cliff. Not a lot of BD use on the PC. And few people who use Windows even know what Media Center is.
 
PowerDVD is $49.95! I wonder if Dell will still include it for free.
 
GREAT. Keeps me from having to strip out all that useless crap anyway. Seriously, people USE windows media player? In this day and age?

I strip windows down of all that crap and install things like videolan.
 
bigdogchris said:
So, they are removing Media Center & DVD playback, and are going to charge you if you want them...
Click to expand...

I read about this earlier today. That site had speculated that Windows 8 will be cheaper than Windows 7 was. I doubt it. Microsoft seems to be getting pretty bold about Windows 8. I think it's going to backfire on them.
 
I'm fine with this if it lowers the base-price for a copy of Windows. If I want Media Center I'll buy it and the price will go back up to where it was. Seems simple enough.

Q1DM6 said:
GREAT. Keeps me from having to strip out all that useless crap anyway. Seriously, people USE windows media player? In this day and age?

I strip windows down of all that crap and install things like videolan.
Click to expand...
Aug, I hate VLC, never fails to bug-out on me at the weirdest times.

Installed a couple codecs, Windows Media Player (and Center) work great...
 
There are like 10 people in the entire world that use Media Center. Microsoft collects information about what everyone clicks. Almost every time Windows Media Center is opened it was by mistake, and is closed within a few seconds.
 
chinesepiratefood said:
There are like 10 people in the entire world that use Media Center. Microsoft collects information about what everyone clicks. Almost every time Windows Media Center is opened it was by mistake, and is closed within a few seconds.
Click to expand...

Probably more like 15 million people. And that's still an insignificant number to Microsoft.

The problem with a product that's as successful and widely deployed as Windows is that no matter what you do you piss off millions of people.
 
If by removing X feature, they can make the product cheaper due to some licensing whatever, I'm all for it. For instance, I don't watch DVDs on my computer, so I'd feel rather put upon if I were asked to subsidize those that do.

This is a complaint that works out in my favor. Go MS.
 
VLC - jack of all trades, master of none...


makes sense to remove things, have we not been complaining to MS to remove some crap from their OS, more so legacy things.
 
Who watches DVDs on their computers anyway? Last time I did that was 2003...
 
Arainach said:
Who watches DVDs on their computers anyway? Last time I did that was 2003...
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I know someone that does. But that's the whole point. Out of all the people I know, ONE of them actually uses their computer for watching DVDs. Everyone else just Netflix/USB/etc and has done so for years.

If they can translate no-decoder as less-cost then go for it.
 
XOR != OR said:
If by removing X feature, they can make the product cheaper due to some licensing whatever, I'm all for it. For instance, I don't watch DVDs on my computer, so I'd feel rather put upon if I were asked to subsidize those that do.

This is a complaint that works out in my favor. Go MS.
Click to expand...

My guess is pricing will remain the same. Which in that case it becomes a money grab.
 
night_2004 said:
My guess is pricing will remain the same. Which in that case it becomes a money grab.
Click to expand...

I don't know how much the royalties are, my guess is a couple of bucks per copy.

500 million copies of Windows 7 sold at let's say 2 bucks a pop is a billion. So if Microsoft reduced the price of Windows 8 $2 a copy would the price reduction equate to over a billion dollars in sales?

No.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't know how much the royalties are, my guess is a couple of bucks per copy.

500 million copies of Windows 7 sold at let's say 2 bucks a pop is a billion. So if Microsoft reduced the price of Windows 8 $2 a copy would the price reduction equate to over a billion dollars in sales?

No.
Click to expand...

Sticking with the $2/copy guess. If they don't have to pay $2/copy in royalties and you lower the price by $2/copy, net profit remains the same. What I'm suggesting is MS will not pay $2/copy in royalties, keep the price, and make an extra billion plus whatever they'll make in 8WMC sales. Money grab.
 
As it lacks so many included features. I suppose windows 8 will cost less?

It's like the resturants that charge you extra for condiments or something stupid. Sure they save a few c. But Would I go back there? Not so likely. Resturants that give a few c of free stuff are more likely to get the $50, so it all works out. People want an OS with as few annoyances and missing bits as possible. Not many people use gifs anymore, are they going to strip out gif support?

Still don't get why windows 8 comes with so much pointless adware junk.
 
You know what, maybe removing DVD playback isn't such a big deal. The point is now that they have a much better included market place, 'what's next'?

I remember when they started selling DLC for consoles, specifically Guitar Hero tracks. Many ignorant people thought it was so great that you can add on content later, but I knew better. Now you get games with removed features that get sold to you as day one DLC. Bet gamers didn't see that coming when they started buying new songs, did they? Before you know it, if you want the 'full game' you've paid the $60 retail price, then another $30-60 in add-ons.

Some people just don't see what software companies are doing to you.
 
For all of those saying that Windows 8 will have less features than Windows 7 and should cost less, what have you guys been smoking? You may not like the new capabilities in Windows 8 but there's tons that 8 can do that 7 can't and 8 can still do DVD playback and Media Center, but depending on your situation that might cost extra money. And the truth of the matter is that an ever shrinking population uses those features.
 
bigdogchris said:
Some people just don't see what software companies are doing to you.
Click to expand...

In this case Microsoft is doing nothing different than any other company, software or otherwise. It's cutting costs on stuff that overall is waste.

People are complaining about this move and I've yet to see a compelling business reason for Microsoft to pay royalties on every copy of Windows sold to placate an ever shirking number of Windows users.
 
Microsoft is crashing and burning. This is so stupid. Quite tired of it. We are heading for an ugly 5 - 10 years of computing where no company has good control and nothing is standard. PC gaming will be the hardest hit by this fiasco and it will be sad. It seems almost impossible but I could almost see myself not being a computing enthusiast any more. I might turn into one of those people that just buys whatever is cheapest and says forget it.

In the past 5 years I have seen the worst time for computing. Choices from every OEM are going down, resolutions on any sorto of computer have been stagnant or declining. How many 15 inch 768p laptops do we really need? And the shitty end of computing is taking over as we see garbage like ultra books and tablets read glorified over priced phones taking over the space of capable computers instead of just bing a niche product.

And alot of this has to do with what MS pushes. I personally think it is mostly because MS would rather be like apple and break a single product into multiple products and sell you all of them. Phone, Xbox, crappy arb tablet, crappy laptop.

Instead of phone, nice convertible tablet / laptop that can game. <- this is where we should be at this point, now instead we are falling farther and farther away from unification and going more toward fragmentation.

Also to heatless sun, the reason an ever shrinking population uses those features is because ever since vista MS has been screwing those features over in favor of pushing the xbox. People draw correlations, but sometimes they created the problem.
 
The more I hear of windows 8 the more I realize it's going to be a disaster. I just switched to 7 and it's great, and I'm sticking to this for a while now. I kinda can't wait to see when 8 gets released so I can watch the train wreck that shell happen. :p
 
So instead of using WMP and WMC for movies/media, I can continue to use XBMC and VLC, just like before? Great, it's good that nothing has changed for tech-savvy people at least.

But it sucks for the Average Joe who doesn't know about free alternatives like that, because they'll probably end up buying expensive software they don't need (and usually doesn't work as well or as customizable as free media players). Plus, there are way more Average Joes than there are tech-savvy people, so M$ will make a nice chunk of change doing this.

They're called M$ for a reason.
 
Does stock VLC play VOB (standard DVD video) files straight out of the box? IDK because I think mine has FFDShow.

Thanks. :)
 
Who can blame them? The EU is probably preparing another billion dollar lawsuit for MS's cornering of the media center market. :D
 
The EU doesn't need a reason to sue Microsoft for $1B. Or it they do, they'll make one up.
 
DVD's? In 2012? Media Center is garbage and always has been, everyone know this. Their are much better alternatives (Splash Player,VLC,Pot Player,etc.,), so this makes a lot of sense and MS knows this.

DVD's are really a thing of the past. Considering you can stream or download 720p/1080p content via the internetz, this seems a logical step for MS. Is DVD playback even 480p? I havent watched a DVD or DVDrip since about 2004.
 
Many people still watch DVDs. If you go to a library, you'll often see that's the most active part of the place: people checking out DVDs. :p Redbox and Netflix have large numbers of DVD renters too. (Sometimes it might be worth considering if your usage is "typical", which it is often not.)

Like I mentioned above, most of the Windows 8 licenses sold to consumers will be preinstalled by a hardware OEM. I really doubt many will ship desktops and laptops without DVD playback functionality, particularly when the systems contain an optical drive.
 
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