Remember back in April of last year, when the EU successfully defended customer choice by crushing the big, bad monopoly power of Microsoft?

Well, as predicted, it turns out that a whole lot of time & effort has gone into defending a choice that no one wants:

PC makers snub Windows sans media player

"Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens all said they have no firm plans to install Windows XP N, citing a lack of customer demand. A Dell representative added Tuesday that customers expect to have a media player included. . . 'Customers purchase computers expecting them to come equipped with the capability of playing back digital media files, and it's our obligation to meet this need. ' "

As I said in my original essay on the topic, Windows is not number one because of its quality; it's number one because of its ubiquity. It's only through the twisted logic of government-think that making the product less functional is somehow a good thing for consumers.