Microsoft generously allows people to alter their computer environments.
July 11, 2001 1:21 PM   Subscribe

Microsoft generously allows people to alter their computer environments. This act of corporate benevolence will allow manufacturers to - gasp! - put new links on the Start menu and desktop. Also, they will allow Internet Explorer to be uninstalled, so that a person can use the bug-ridden, crippled browser of their choice. How gracious of them.
posted by solistrato (15 comments total)
 
... but they still will not allow you to (legally) sell OEM software unless it is bundled with the original hardware.
posted by chrish at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2001


Frankly, I'de like to see IE become the shell and just embed Explorer functionality
posted by Zebulun at 1:38 PM on July 11, 2001


I miss DOS.
posted by fusinski at 1:55 PM on July 11, 2001


[I miss DOS]

4dos rawked!
posted by revbrian at 2:02 PM on July 11, 2001


forget this, let's all go to os2.
posted by will at 2:08 PM on July 11, 2001


read microsoft's press release. (oh and if you're on IE5Mac you can watch the page sort of break, too...)
but you can't uninstall ie - it's tied into the os. Here's a quote: "Consumers will be able to use the Add-Remove Programs feature in Windows XP to remove end-user access to the Internet Explorer components of the operating system." People can remove end-user access, aka AN ICON, not the program itself.
posted by panopticon at 2:21 PM on July 11, 2001


Well Goodness Gracious....to hell with it, I say.Let's kill those sunsabitches.
posted by bradth27 at 3:10 PM on July 11, 2001


Of course they already have the market share in browsers and are now moving on to take over instant messaging. Will it even matter what companies put in it's place?
posted by fresh-n-minty at 3:45 PM on July 11, 2001


i can alrady remove the IE icon from anywhere, but i doubt i can remove the executable file. there is a difference.

not that you wouldn't be able to browse from any normal folder window anyway...
posted by o2b at 3:50 PM on July 11, 2001


o2b, it depends on what you mean by the "executable file". IE5.5 in Win2K is "IEXPLORE.EXE" and you can remove that. But that file is only 60K and all it really consists of is an object wrapper for the real IE, which is implemented as a series of system objects buried in a bunch of DLLs. That same functionality is also available to other programs. (For instance, Eudora uses it to display HTML email.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 4:02 PM on July 11, 2001


AOL also switched to the "IE rendering engine" (as I call it), making the lives of many web designers a whole hell of a lot easier.
posted by karenh at 4:21 PM on July 11, 2001


IEradicator is a freeware that lets you remove all versions of IE from Windows 9x-Me. I have used it to remove the bundled IE from Win98 and then clean install IE 5.5. It is made by the fine people who also makes 98Lite.
posted by tamim at 4:54 AM on July 12, 2001


I like IE.... maybe it's just me, but I think it's alright.

For what it's worth, the K-desktop people also embedded the browser into the windowing environment, and I gotta tell you -- once you get used to it, you never want to go back.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying MS has been great or anything, but integrating the browser into the OS makes perfect sense to me.
posted by ph00dz at 9:26 AM on July 12, 2001


Integrating the browser into the OS isn't necessarily a bad thing, but then it won't let you install multiple versions (for testing purposes) either...
posted by tallman at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2001


And you should also have a choice on which browser you'd like to hook into your OS...
posted by fooljay at 10:01 PM on July 12, 2001


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