Opera: Microsoft's 'minor tweak' of Windows 7 not enough

[Lechio]

This is one interesting thread. We see a lot of outraged people bashing Opera and the EU, yet the vast majority of those who post aren't "affected" by this publicity stunt from Microsoft, that decided to not have IE (it's installed but it doesn't show an icon to click on) available on the Windows that is sold in Europe.

If anyone should be complaining would be those people who will be affected by this.

[Antaris Veteran]

^ As far as I am aware, the underlying rendering engine and supporting components are installed, as they are core components of the OS. The shell which is Internet Explorer is not installed, and has to be installed manually. Trident != Internet Explorer

[Lechio]

The "Turn Windows features on and off" feature refers to the kill switch option Microsoft added to Windows 7 in March. Then, Microsoft managers confirmed that the new operating system would offer user settings for disabling, but not deleting, a host of bundled applications, including IE8. "If a feature is deselected, it is not available for use," said Jack Mayo, a program manager on the Windows team. "This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system and not available to users on the computer."

^According to the OP nothing is removed. The files all remain there.

[Growled Member]

I really think Opera believes if Windows users have a choice at startup of which browser to use then some of them will choose Opera. At this point I disagree. For one thing name means a lot and almost everyone has heard of IE and Firefox. For another thing, Opera is sort of quirky and it does have rendering problems. A lot of us who have used it has moved on to other browsers because we just didn't care for Opera.

If Opera will work to have the best browsing experience, they will have users. Until then, no plan in the world is going to help them achieve their goal. People use what they like.

[Neoauld]

I really think Opera believes if Windows users have a choice at startup of which browser to use then some of them will choose Opera. At this point I disagree. For one thing name means a lot and almost everyone has heard of IE and Firefox. For another thing, Opera is sort of quirky and it does have rendering problems. A lot of us who have used it has moved on to other browsers because we just didn't care for Opera.

If Opera will work to have the best browsing experience, they will have users. Until then, no plan in the world is going to help them achieve their goal. People use what they like.

itll just frustrate users who are not very tech savvy and they'll end up blaming microsoft because it came installed with windows

if there IS a ballot screen, there should be a warning that its third party and there will be NO support with it

and something that says "Microsoft recommends IE"

but then opera will just bitch about that to even though it makes sense

[Denis W. Veteran]

^According to the OP nothing is removed. The files all remain there.

I think that this happens:

The application itself may or may not be removed, but certain shared libraries that are required to render pages in many applications will still remain. So files in %PROGRAMFILES%\Internet Explorer may be removed, but not certain libraries in Windows\System32. The packaged files still remain somewhere on the HD for easy re-activation.

It's foolish to expect a 100% removal of all IE and Trident components without considering that some apps may fall apart.

[ncoday]

The same that are responsible now. You install after accepting the license.

The end-user who bought the computer from a store will not see it like that.

Microsoft Support will get flooded with clueless computer users who are ****ed that Opera/Firefox/whatever killed their computer. They will escalate and moan/complain when Microsoft tells them to contact the maker of the browser.

Microsoft will have to spend more $$ to hire more phone agents and put in new phone lines to cover the surge in calls and complaints.

Anyone who has worked customer service knows exactly what will happen.

[M_Lyons10]

I believe the "new" netscape browser was made as a last ditch effort by Netscape to gain any traction they could. But all it was, was a Firefox clone like Flock. They gave up quite some time ago though.

Yeah, I had thought they had ended development on this. I was just pointing out that it was another revenue option that Mozilla was able to pursue. They have done similar work for large corporations as well for internal use only.

I will have to disagree with you on that one.. It was simply one company putting their own product on to another one of their own products. Something any company should have the right to do. And again since Firefox still exists and is still very successful apparently it only hurts competiton when you cant compete in the first place which is the case with Netscape and Opera. If you have a good product obviously you can compete whether IE gets bundled or not.

Good post. The fact that Mozilla CAN compete makes it clear that this is more an Opera issue than a Microsoft one. Does Microsoft have market share? Sure. But Opera has been around for a LOOOOOONG time to have as little market share as they do. It's because they make poor products, not because Microsoft bundled IE in Windows. They are just pointing the finger at everyone else as bitter companies do when they do poorly while others do well.

[M_Lyons10]

The end-user who bought the computer from a store will not see it like that.

Microsoft Support will get flooded with clueless computer users who are ****ed that Opera/Firefox/whatever killed their computer. They will escalate and moan/complain when Microsoft tells them to contact the maker of the browser.

Microsoft will have to spend more $$ to hire more phone agents and put in new phone lines to cover the surge in calls and complaints.

Anyone who has worked customer service knows exactly what will happen.

Exactly, and no company should be expected to provide support for someone elses products. How many people have complained that Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, etc. slowed down their computer, crashed something, lost their connection to their printer, etc. I've heard these complaints. I don't personally know what occurred in any of these situations as I have experienced no such problems, but someone runs a "cleanup" utility they found online, then start their browser, and they never think the issue was caused by the "cleanup" utility. It couldn't possibly do something to their machine, it must be [insert browser here] because I used that last... Add to this the add ons for Firefox (Some of which aren't designed all that well - though most are), and Microsoft is going to be getting a lot of calls that aren't even going to have anything to do with them. Because THEY put that browser on the computer...

If I were Microsoft and the ballot screen occurs, I would require the browsers to pass some sort of certification before being added to the ballot at the very least.

[Growled Member]

Exactly, and no company should be expected to provide support for someone elses products. How many people have complained that Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, etc. slowed down their computer, crashed something, lost their connection to their printer, etc. I've heard these complaints.

I can see this being a bloody support nightmare.

If I were Microsoft and the ballot screen occurs, I would require the browsers to pass some sort of certification before being added to the ballot at the very least.

Good idea.

[BajiRav]

Yes because nobody uses email or downloads using torrents! :rolleyes: The torrent download feature is pretty good for the average user who doesn't understand torrents, why would you need an extra application to download something from the internet?

Seeing as everyone keeps saying it, what are the major rendering issues with Opera?

Wow! so it is ok if Opera bundles a torrent/email client (and other crap) with a browser but not ok for Microsoft to bundle a browser?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Using that logic, then all browsers "bundle" a RSS reader, a bookmark manager, etc. I'd consider it "integrated" over "bundled" - bundled implying that something is completely decoupled from the main application and can be installed/uninstalled at will. Third party toolbars would fit this description.

To be honest, if one wanted to remove stuff they didn't want from Opera they'd have to reverse engineer the 4 MB opera.dll and find out what sections of code to comment out... but why bother?

[FISKER_Q]

Well it's official, Microsoft has proposed adding a Ballot Screen to choose a web browser of your choosing, i guess it's good news for the consumers, bad news for everything right. Source

At the very least i hope they include every browser EXCEPT Opera.

[Swoosh]

Questions, questions.

Which browsers are included?

Does every little obscure browser ever written have to be in the list?

Are the browser installers going to actually be on the disc, or will the

browsers be grabbed off the net? And if there is no external internet

access (say intranet only)?

If they're on the disc, what happens when they have security issues?

Say you reinstall Windows 2 years later and by then FF 3.5.1 will have

dozens of known vulnerabilities. What then? If you'd installed IE you'd

get updates automatically via Windows update.

If they're not on the disc, and the browser is no longer available on the

web at the time of installation, what then? I mean, it's not impossible

that a company like Opera would go out of business. Domain names

can change too.

[M_Lyons10]

Well it's official, Microsoft has proposed adding a Ballot Screen to choose a web browser of your choosing, i guess it's good news for the consumers, bad news for everything right. Source

At the very least i hope they include every browser EXCEPT Opera.

Oh me too! LMAO That would be great.

Questions, questions.

Which browsers are included?

Does every little obscure browser ever written have to be in the list?

Are the browser installers going to actually be on the disc, or will the

browsers be grabbed off the net? And if there is no external internet

access (say intranet only)?

If they're on the disc, what happens when they have security issues?

Say you reinstall Windows 2 years later and by then FF 3.5.1 will have

dozens of known vulnerabilities. What then? If you'd installed IE you'd

get updates automatically via Windows update.

If they're not on the disc, and the browser is no longer available on the

web at the time of installation, what then? I mean, it's not impossible

that a company like Opera would go out of business. Domain names

can change too.

Exactly. Who's to say that the browser makers aren't going to change the directory of their installer? This is just a ridiculous nightmare for Microsoft and I don't feel it's the right answer to be honest. What a nightmare... I hope Microsoft requires some form of certification though. What if someone installs Opera and sees that there are all sorts of display issues (Which there are), or there's a huge vulnerability that allows something through? I dunno...

[JunkMail]

I'm on the side of Opera :D obviously Microsoft should cut some FAT! Constantly digging into the lives of people by invading privacy! Look at that Windows media player for instance, I'm tried of using Anti-Spy softwares to disable "Automatic" functions, tweaking all the nonsense so that softwares behaves right and does not phone HOME!

This is like CIA keeping your life's logs and sending it back to it's base! How annoying is that? They make the OS, they make the browser, they make the network drivers so, are we to trust Microsoft blindly for everything??? I'm so happy that my router is OUTside my system and gives me full information of which software behaves badly.

[FISKER_Q]

I'm on the side of Opera :D obviously Microsoft should cut some FAT! Constantly digging into the lives of people by invading privacy! Look at that Windows media player for instance, I'm tried of using Anti-Spy softwares to disable "Automatic" functions, tweaking all the nonsense so that softwares behaves right and does not phone HOME!

This is like CIA keeping your life's logs and sending it back to it's base! How annoying is that? They make the OS, they make the browser, they make the network drivers so, are we to trust Microsoft blindly for everything??? I'm so happy that my router is OUTside my system and gives me full information of which software behaves badly.

The only "Phone home"-features i remember being part of the discussion was Alexa's monitoring thingy in Internet Explorer, the media player deal was partly because back then it wasn't easy for other apps to take control, and they also used the media player to advertise their own media store.

In any case, it doesn't matter what Microsoft have done in the past, what matters is what they do today, and in the future, and having to advertise the competitors browser is totally and utterly unnessecary for competition, infact all it does further remove competition because the consumer won't be told by the other alternatives there is.

[George P Global Moderator]

I'm on the side of Opera :D obviously Microsoft should cut some FAT! Constantly digging into the lives of people by invading privacy! Look at that Windows media player for instance, I'm tried of using Anti-Spy softwares to disable "Automatic" functions, tweaking all the nonsense so that softwares behaves right and does not phone HOME!

This is like CIA keeping your life's logs and sending it back to it's base! How annoying is that? They make the OS, they make the browser, they make the network drivers so, are we to trust Microsoft blindly for everything??? I'm so happy that my router is OUTside my system and gives me full information of which software behaves badly.

0_o

Tin foil hat on too tight maybe?

[JunkMail]

The only "Phone home"-features i remember being part of the discussion was Alexa's monitoring thingy in Internet Explorer, the media player deal was partly because back then it wasn't easy for other apps to take control, and they also used the media player to advertise their own media store.

In any case, it doesn't matter what Microsoft have done in the past, what matters is what they do today, and in the future, and having to advertise the competitors browser is totally and utterly unnessecary for competition, infact all it does further remove competition because the consumer won't be told by the other alternatives there is.

Well, its very easy to destroy trust and very hard to gain. I simply can't swallow that Microsoft will NOT call home for various reasons in their current or future OS (even if I set disable internet communication in gpedit.msc it will contact home regardless) They just don't care anymore, all I know is that they are keeping more and more doors open so "someone" can get inside out privacy. The huge bulk of softwares and running services proves only one thing :( you're a TARGET!

hmm

Edited July 25, 2009 by JunkMail

[FISKER_Q]

Well, its very easy to destroy trust and very hard to gain. I simply can't swallow that Microsoft will NOT call home for various reasons in their current or future OS (even if I set disable internet communication in gpedit.msc it will contact home regardless) They just don't care anymore, all I know is that they are keeping more and more doors open so "someone" can get inside out privacy. The huge bulk of softwares and running services proves only one thing :( you're a TARGET!

Edit: Target --> (_|_) <-- (and that my friend is the butt)

Right, oh well atleast your username is pretty spot on.

[Denis W. Veteran]

In any case, it doesn't matter what Microsoft have done in the past, what matters is what they do today, and in the future, and having to advertise the competitors browser is totally and utterly unnessecary for competition, infact all it does further remove competition because the consumer won't be told by the other alternatives there is.

Sounds good... except I'd like to see the statement applied both ways. Everyone here is beating up Opera for their payware/adware days it seems.

[FISKER_Q]

Sounds good... except I'd like to see the statement applied both ways. Everyone here is beating up Opera for their payware/adware days it seems.

I'm only beating up Opera because they're part of this accusation, their browser history isn't really relevant for me, but i do agree that this applies to Opera just as much as it does Microsoft, the reason why Opera doesn't appeal to me, is because it's feature overload, which is a shame because it's a good browser actually.

Currently i'm using Chrome, but i still don't think Microsoft should be forced to do anything about IE, i can understand that they should be pressuring OEM's to use IE8, and it should definitely be a feature you can disable, but that's as far as it should go, everything else is just ridiculous.

[CuCumber]

the reason why Opera doesn't appeal to me, is because it's feature overload, which is a shame because it's a good browser actually.

You don't have to use those features, it's not like they are constantly popping up shouting: "Hey, I'm Mr. Mail Client, use me!"

Should I complain about Photoshop features I never use?

[FISKER_Q]

You don't have to use those features, it's not like they are constantly popping up shouting: "Hey, I'm Mr. Mail Client, use me!"

Should I complain about Photoshop features I never use?

Should i buy or download Photoshop if the only features i ever use is pasting screenshots into MS paint and saving them?

[CuCumber]

Should i buy or download Photoshop if the only features i ever use is pasting screenshots into MS paint and saving them?

No. Should I throw my Photoshop CS4 away because it has "Gamut warning" that I don't need?

So, what was your real problem with Opera?