What's wrong with Windows XP N, and how to put it right

THERE'S USUALLY some excitement when a new version of Windows appears - but a few months ago, an important new version was released and almost nobody paid any attention.

European Union Commissioner, Mario Monti, ordered it, Microsoft grumbled and griped but did as it was told for once, and now we've got it. Elsewhere in the world, the government of South Korea has just ordered Microsoft to produce something similar but slightly further-reaching.

The trouble is, nobody's buying it.

What is it? Windows XP N - as in, "n" for "none", which is how much media playback functionality this version has. It has no bundled copy of Windows Media Player. This was the remedy that the EU accepted to open up competition between Microsoft and other providers of Windows applications. The Korean Federal Trade Commission wants the same, but it wants Windows Messenger removed too.

Many observers have asked what exactly the point of this is, commenting that there seems little point to XP N. And actually, they're right - the trouble is, though, that they're asking the wrong question. The question isn't why don't people want XP N - because mostly, they don't, and it's not selling.

But here are a few more salient questions and some possible answers.

XP N isn't selling for several reasons. One answer is simply choice: Europeans can still buy the full version and it doesn't cost any less - so why buy a version with something missing? Yes, MediaPlayer has security holes, but so do many other components of Windows which are still part of XP N. You can install alternative media players on standard XP and so long as you don't use MediaPlayer you won't be at risk. There's no great gain.

A more interesting question is this:

Why can people still buy ordinary XP?
If XP N is meant to be a remedy for anti-competitive behaviour, it seems odd that Microsoft is still allowed to indulge in that behaviour right alongside the supposed fix. If there was no alternative for Europeans at least to buy anything but XP N, or for European machines to only come bundled with XP N, it would be far more interesting and revealing to see how many users went and downloaded MediaPlayer versus other rival players, or went to the trouble of getting the “full” version of Windows from outside the EU.

If this had happened, I predict that people would have complained, though. They always do. But there is a real problem with XP N, and it's this: that it doesn't do what it set out to achieve. Rather than increasing users' choices, it actually [i]reduces[/i] them. You don't have any more choice of media players with XP N than with ordinary XP - on either version, you can run whatever you want. The only thing about XP N is that you lose the option of running the usual offering.

This being so, another interesting question is:

What could be done to increase users' freedom of choice?
There are a lot of bundled tools with Windows XP; so many, and some of them in there for so long, that it no longer makes sense to try to isolate which bits are arguably separate products which shouldn't be included with an operating system and which are legitimate components.

There's a quick run-down included at the end of this article, to save those with short attention spans from getting bored. There's quite an assemblage - I counted forty different programs and subcomponents in a newly-installed copy of XP Professional, excluding extras provided by the system manufacturer, and that's not counting help files and so on. And note that this is after I'd already turned off as many as I could of the bits I didn't want.

What's more, many ancillary bits have no entries in the Start menu, such as the .NET subsystem or DirectX and its diagnostics, the various screensavers, desktop wallpapers, display themes and appearances.

To be fair, some of these can be removed using the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel, but many can't, including all of the big heavyweights such as Internet Explorer, Media Player, Outlook Express and Messenger.

Now, the important message here is that none of these are essential. Windows would function perfectly well without any of this stuff. Even things which are quite integral parts of the GUI, like the Volume Control, have third-party replacements - for instance, provided with sound card drivers.

In fact, non-essential parts of Windows go deeper than you might realise. The Windows Explorer itself is just a shell, a program like any other, and there are a host of external replacements for it - such as LiteStep, which gives Windows something of the look and feel of NeXTstep. NT4 had essentially the same GUI as XP, derived from Windows 95's new desktop. (Indeed, when installing Win95, you were offered the old Windows 3 Program Manager/File Manager combo instead, if you wanted.) NT also made it possible to remove Windows' networking system completely, either for standalone machines or as a step in resolving networking problems. Things like video and sound playback were once external features, too; even the command prompt can be substituted.

Microsoft throws an awful lot into the box - or rather, onto the disk - alongside XP. There are hundreds of bits of software included with XP that it will actually run perfectly well without - indeed, remove all this stuff and XP becomes smaller, faster and more reliable.

But Microsoft doesn't want you to do that. If you know your way around the Add/Remove programs control panel, you might be thinking "but I can remove IE and all that!" Well, no, you can't, not as standard. If you look closely at the wording in the dialog boxes, all XP lets you do is [i]hide[/i] programs such as Internet Explorer, Messenger, Outlook Express and Media Player. The binaries are still there on disk. All that Add/Remove Programs does is hide them from from view - their shortcuts are removed from the Start Menu and so on.

Which brings us to another interesting question:

Why can't users of XP remove any component they wish?
This one's open to debate. Microsoft claimed in court that Windows' Internet functionality was an integral part of the OS, but that isn't true. These bits all started as optional extras and they can still be removed if you know how. For instance, XP is often mocked for its “Teletubby” default theme, but few people know that if you set it back to the Classic look, then stop and disable the system service called “Themes”, you have actually turned off the “skinning” ability altogether, saving both memory and a bit of CPU power. Built-in it may be, but it's not essential; the system not only functions without it, it runs better. That's a pretty good definition of an an “extra”.

For Windows systems that are already installed, LitePC's XPlite (or 2000Lite or 98Lite) will let you disable and remove almost every component of Windows. If you haven't installed Win2K or XP yet, there's also nLite, which tweaks the Windows installation files so Internet Explorer and so on never get installed in the first place.

98Lite even lets you rip & replace the Windows Explorer shell itself. So long as you have a licensed copy of Win95 and installation media, you can expunge 98's Internet Explorer-driven “Active Desktop” and replace it with the lightweight Explorer from Win95. This doesn't have QuickLaunch toolbars or thumbnails or Web content in folders, and progress bars are per file not per operation, but it's a [i]lot[/i] smaller, faster and more reliable than the IE-integrated version. It was good enough for NT4, an enterprise-grade OS, or so Microsoft claimed at the time.

By now, many readers will, I'm sure, be asking another important question:

Who cares? XP is fine as it is. I don't want to lose functionality by deleting bits!
Well, it's true, if you remove bits of Windows this way, it will no longer do everything that many people want. There are still two reasons why people might want to do it, though.

Firstly, as discussed, removing unneeded components makes XP smaller, faster and more stable. This is a good thing for any computer, especially a corporate workstation, for example; the less is installed, the less there is to go wrong. The vast majority of office users don't need themes and if there is a corporate email solution they don't need Outlook Express, games and very likely multimedia playback or Internet chat, either. Not only can things no longer break, if users don't have them, they can't find them and play with them when they're not meant to, either.

Secondly - and this is the bit that I believe Microsoft fears - much of the built-in functionality of Windows can be replaced by third-party alternatives anyway. What's more, most of these have advantages, too.

I won't go into a list of these here - I'll save that for another article - but there is still a choice of several alternatives for almost every non-essential bit of Windows. However, after years of marginalisation by Microsoft's bundling of its own rival offerings, most now have a tiny market-share. Many survive because they are open source products and thus largely immune to commercial pressures; an example is the Firefox web browser. When use of this approached 10%, as measured by usage statistics from some popular sites, it was cause for celebration.

Firefox, those with long memories might recall, is a development of the Mozilla project, which is what became of Netscape 5 after it was open-sourced. Netscape was once a formidable company, wealthy and utterly dominant in its niche, as Google is today. Then Microsoft started to feel threatened and responded by giving Internet Explorer a major upgrade and bundling it in with Windows for free. If you doubt that this tactic has worked well for Microsoft, look where Netscape is today. It's dead and gone. Its eponymous flagship product lives on under another name, as a free open source program, but is now a tiny minority player - albeit growing.

This is why Microsoft bundles its offerings, this is why XP won't let you uninstall them, and this is the situation that XP N was intended to remedy - but is manifestly not doing.

The problem isn't that MediaPlayer is a mandatory, non-optional part of the installation of Windows XP - so removing it cures nothing. That's why nobody wants XP N.

The real problem is that much of XP, including all of Microsoft's Internet tools, are non-optional parts of XP. If none were included with Windows and users had to install and download them all separately, use of alternative products would be a lot more widespread. Microsoft knows this and doesn't want it to happen.

Regrettably, loose corporate regulation and weak enforcement of legislation designed to prevent anti-competitive behaviour have allowed the current situation to happen and it's too late to undo that now. What's more, lots of people like the bundled tools now. They're used to them and despite the manifold problems of "Internet Exploder" (A.K.A. "Aiee! 6") and "Lookout! Explodes" and their kin, they do actually work. Sure, many of the rivals work better in one way or another, but "good enough" will do.

Producing an edition of Windows with all these parts removed just results in a crippled operating system that can't do all the things users today normally might expect to do: surf the web, read email, listen to music, watch video, chat online and so on. The user must go, find, download and install other tools to perform these tasks.

It's a remedy, but it's not a solution.

So what is the answer?
I've tried to show that the problem is a lack of choice for Windows users. Phrased like that, the reply is obvious: given them their freedom of choice back. With Windows as it stands, and Vista will be just the same, if you don't want IE or OE or WMP, you can install any alternative you like - but you can't remove the original. That is where the matter of choice comes in.

Every single part of Windows that is not utterly essential for it to function at all should be an optional install. For every accessory, every Wizard, every font, wallpaper, sound clip, every application or feature or function that can be removed, it should be made possible to do so. Microsoft does not always know best. People can make up their own minds and make their own choices - but currently, Microsoft doesn't let them.

It doesn't mean a huge rewrite. It doesn't mean a new installation program. It doesn't mean any changes to Windows itself at all, as the third-party programs which achieve this prove. All it needs is a few restructured configuration files on the Windows distribution media. It's not hard - if a single external developer such as LitePC's Shane Brooks can do it, then Microsoft certainly can. But it won't unless it's forced to.

Many users would like this freedom. Governments would like it - the EU and S Korea being the main two examples today. Network admins would like it, as it would make their machines faster and more stable and their jobs a little more easy.

There are other benefits, too. Once upon a time, if Windows' networking or IE got really screwed up, the standard procedure was to uninstall them, delete any remaining directories and configuration files, then reinstall from scratch. This got you back to a clean, working configuration without reinstalling Windows and all your applications.

Today, you can't do that any more. Microsoft won't let you. You can't uninstall such things from modern Windows.

But the vital point is not that this is not primarily a technical consideration - it's a business one. Microsoft doesn't want you to remove these tools, so it disabled the ability. Lots of us would like it back again, please.

So what's the big difference? What's the payout?
Nobody loses; nobody is forced to buy a crippled copy of Windows; there is no confusing choice between normal and "N" editions. If the EU and S Korea wish, they could mandate that their localised editions default to not installing the components which they object to - it just means changing the default state of one or two tick-boxes, after all. People who want Media Player just go into Add/Remove Programs and tick its box; it's as simple as that. Or, of course, they could just download and install the latest version from the Web, as they can today with XP N.

Vendors could, if they wished, ship OEM copies of Windows with their own choice of tools instead of Microsoft's offerings, rather than as well as. It would be an attractive selling point for manufacturers seeking differentiation in a competitive market to offer a version of Windows with all the known-vulnerable tools removed and replaced with safer alternatives, for example. The interest is there: HP is already discussing shipping systems with AOL's Netscape 8 (a revamped Firefox 1) as the default browser, for instance. Smaller vendors could offer a suite of free tools, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, GAIM and VLC. Larger ones could make a few deals and offer licensed alternatives such as Eudora, The Bat!, RealPlayer, WinAmp Pro or QuickTime Pro.

Further-reaching legislation might compel Microsoft to once again offer some of its lighter alternatives to current offerings, such as the Win95/NT4 shell.

The only party here that loses out is Microsoft, which is rather the point of a legal measure. It is a form of punishment for wrong-doing, after all. The market is re-opened to Microsoft's competitors and Microsoft itself has to do a little extra work. But at the end of the day, it gets happier users and government approval. Really, even it doesn't lose out after all. Who knows, it might even learn that anticompetitive behaviour isn't necessary to succeed. Playing fair doesn't hurt?

So what are all these extras, anyway?
Aside from the famed and troubled Windows Media Player, a fresh installation of Windows also contains star turns such as Internet Explorer, Windows Messenger, Windows Movie Maker, Outlook Express and its hanger-on, Address Book. If you look hard enough, you'll find bits or vestiges of FrontPage and NetMeeting, too. You might have Paint or Imaging or both, while WindowsUpdate will try to press the Windows Journal Viewer onto you as well.

Poor old HyperTerminal is still in there, now sans its nag screen - and if you ever doubted how effective a sales tactic having a basic version of your product bundled in with Windows is, look at what a major international player it's made of Hilgraeve.

(On that note, you might also ask what became of Central Point Software, who provided MS-DOS 6's "Microsoft Backup" and "Microsoft Anti-Virus". Didn't do them much good. Looks like Stac made the right decision in not going with the deal to bundle Stacker. In case you don't remember, Stac sued Microsoft and won over DoubleSpace, which was proved in court to contain code taken from Stacker. Microsoft handed over a couple of hundred million in damages, but it got to keep DoubleSpace - it just rewrote the offending parts and renamed it DriveSpace instead.)

Then there are the token efforts: applications that don't really do enough to be useful but presumably add ticks in boxes somewhere, like Wordpad and Backup. Notepad does the job, but it's pretty poor - it doesn't even have a search and replace function, let alone things like syntax highlighting and multi-file handling that Linux users take for granted in their text editors. Whenever you see a homepage proudly proclaiming that it was "made with Notepad", reflect how much time they might have been saved using TextPad instead.

Slightly more useful are Disk Cleanup, Synchronize, System Information, System Restore and Disk Defragmenter - a cut-down version of Executive Software's Diskeeper. All have better third-party alternatives, mind. Remote Desktop Connection and Remote Assistance - handy if you need them, utterly useless if you don't - are based on technology from Citrix's WinFrame system. Scheduled Tasks was once the Windows Agent, an extra in the Windows 95 Plus Pack, while Security Center (sic) and Set Program Access and Defaults came in just recently in XP service packs.

We'll gloss over "Tour Windows XP" and the rather blatant advertisement that is “Windows Catalog”. You might find "Microsoft Interative Training" in your Accessories somewhere, too.

There are a bunch of little tools that Apple might once have called "desk accessories" - Calculator, Character Map, Sound Recorder and Volume Control. Nearly a dozen games. Some helpful "wizards" - Accessibility Wizard, Bluetooth File Transfer Wizard, File and Settings Transfer Wizard, Network Setup Wizard, New Connection Wizard, Program Compatibility Wizard and Wireless Network Setup Wizard. There are the accessibility tools: Magnifier, On-Screen Keyboard, Narrator and Utility Manager.

That's more than fifty additional programs, without counting all the things that don't appear in the Start menu. µ

L'Inqs
Microsoft 'will not change Windows'; Company refutes Korean antitrust accusations, will appeal ban
Microsoft fined €497 million; And sanctions
LiteStep - replacement shell for Windows
XPLite - custom removal of Windows' 'integrated' components
nLite - customised installation of Win2000, XP and Win2003
HP to ship Netscape browser on new PCs