Why IE integration was a bad thing (Score 1)

You really need to read the FOF. First, the free IE thing was a short term thing to get rid of Netscape. The judge said that MS would raise the price of windows as soon as it got rid of Netscape and it has. Win2k is priced at over 300 for coporate users. The big corporate users complained so MS then offered an upgrade for only over 200US. Further, if you read the FOF you will find that MS internal documents show that MS top brass thought there was no way for IE to go up from 20 percent market share when Netscape had 80 percent unless they used their windows monolopy. So they told their OEMs like Dell,Compaq, and HP that they would only get windows if they refused to load Netscape and if they preloaded IE. This was a formal clause in their liciencing contract. Further, MS took the code of IE and mixed it into the OS code files to keep users and geeks from uninstalling IE it. The add/delete feature was deleberately made to not work correctly by MS. The delete doesn't delete IE it only deletes the shortcut and the initial startup code. Because the code is mixed with the OS there is no way for the average user to free up the disk space. This was bad for you and me for several reasons. First, the judge said if you had an business where you didn't need net access you would be forced to having a slower machine and less space on your hard drive for storing things you really need. Also, if you had a business with sensitive info floating around and you wanted to have an intranet, but keep certain employees of the Internet it would be harder if each employee had a copy of IE. I know there are ways around this but it is just one more problem for the employer. Also, the big security concern is by mixing the code for IE and the OS the any bug or sercuity hole in IE can be used by an Internet virus to penetrate the OS and wreak havoc on your system. There is no secure wall between the app and the kernel since they get loaded into the same memory space. You need to read the FOF to find out how many different ways you were abused by MS. Most of the stuff done you can't see as consumer was done immediately. Your choices were limited for you by preintalling. While rest was short term benefit, to get you hooked but you will pay later in your next OS upgrade. Remember the price increase. Read the FOF. You will be enlightened.