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Stowe Boyd on collaborative technologies| [::..General Release..::] |
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| Timing is a production of A Working Model. No whining. |
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| :: 2003/07/14 :: "What is perceived as a crisis is often the end of an illusion." - Bill Seitz |
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:: 2002/05/21 ::
XP means Extra Pain -- Stewart Alsop in Fortune
Alsop installed XP and discovered that XP Messenger can't be removed. At least not in the obvious way -- by running uninstall.
Alsop writes "Microsoft is the same old company. I discovered that something called Windows Messenger was installed on my new machine. This is software for Microsoft's instant-messaging service, and it kept popping up on my screen telling me to register. I don't use instant messaging, so I was a little miffed that Microsoft had built it into XP--particularly because there's no way to get rid of it! (From Microsoft's Website: "How to Prevent Windows Messenger From Running on a Windows XP-Based Computer.... The user interface does not provide a way to remove or to uninstall Windows Messenger.") This seems like exactly the same anticompetitive behavior that got Microsoft into hot water with the government when the company attacked Netscape by building Internet Explorer into the operating system. Now the competitive threat is AOL's instant messaging, and guess what Microsoft has done. Instead of forcing Instant Messenger on people, Microsoft should focus on beating the competition by doing what customers want. Eventually I did figure out how to get rid of Windows Messenger, by editing what's called the Registry file. It's not a good thing for nonexpert users to do."
Alsop is echoing the fears of corporate America. Microsoft seems bound and determined to force their infrastructure components on us all. How can corporate IM players compete with something that is wired in so tightly you have to hack the registry to get rid of it?
The only hope is Microsoft's own hubris. The Passport model for user authentication is unpalatable to most organizations -- who would trust Microsoft to safeguard user profiles? Beside which, many if not most companies manage their user authentication through LDAP, and are not willing to cede control of that information to Microsoft. As a result, XP will rapidly morph to some thing more acceptable to the biggest companies, and unscrewing Messenger from the OS is likely to be one of the strongest requests leveled.
:: Stowe Boyd 5/21/2002 09:36:22 AM [link] ::
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