While the EU analyzes Vista they should consider?

[muguwmp67]

So the EU will look at Vista, demand changes and levy fines (we hope) due to Microsoft violating monopoly laws.

Lets help them: what should they look at?

For me, its NTFS. Its the only real option given to most users these days. With the surge in online video and other applications, file sizes are getting larger, and FAT32 can't handle them.

NTFS is a closed specification, and drivers for it have to be reverse-engineered, which is why there are no stable read/write NTFS drivers. If you lock users to their hard drives, you lock them to the OS. If that isn't unfair competitive practice, I don't know what is.

[Jussi Kukkonen]

This one is on their radars already, but office formats and DRM'd media formats are the Big Thing if you ask me -- The NTFS problem is just an annoyance (a bad one, but still just that) as you can still copy data to other filesystems. Moving your documents to other formats is not as easy.

I do agree with you that reluctance to either opening up NTFS or including other fs drivers in their operating systems is a very good indication of how much interoperation Microsoft wants...

[prizrak]

NTFS is not really a problem (and FAT32 can handle files up to like 8GB if I remember correctly). It's only an issue if you want to dual boot otherwise you don't have to worry about it. Even then you got ExtFS drivers for Windows that allow you to read/write from Linux partitions so you can still move your data.

[Ghil]

the DRM is truly the one big problem of Vista, in my opinion.

[Dr. C]

DRM is a real big one and so is closed formats. Powerful weapons to enforce vendor lock in.

[G Morgan]

The NTFS-3G drivers work fine. TBH I'm more concerned about yet more MS attempts to add proprietary standards to the WWW.

[ZylGadis]

NTFS is not really a problem (and FAT32 can handle files up to like 8GB if I remember correctly). It's only an issue if you want to dual boot otherwise you don't have to worry about it. Even then you got ExtFS drivers for Windows that allow you to read/write from Linux partitions so you can still move your data.

2^32 is 4G, so it is theoretically impossible for FAT32 to handle files of size larger than 4GB. Check your numbers. 4GB is less than a single-layered single-sided DVD. Indeed, I have had trouble with ripped DVD images on FAT32.

I agree that NTFS is a minor issue compared to DRM and TC, though.

[marianom]

That horrible 1252 encoding charset. I hate it!!!

[Adamant1988]

The DRM and lock-in is the major deal here. I'm not expecting it to change, but I'm hoping the EU will bring it more into the public eye that they are losing their freedoms to Microsoft.

Right now most of the complaining about lock-in and DRM happens on sites like this one, so it will be nice to see DRM being exposed for what it really is in the news all over the place, even if nothing is really done about it.

[prizrak]

2^32 is 4G, so it is theoretically impossible for FAT32 to handle files of size larger than 4GB. Check your numbers. 4GB is less than a single-layered single-sided DVD. Indeed, I have had trouble with ripped DVD images on FAT32.

I agree that NTFS is a minor issue compared to DRM and TC, though.

Mah bad.

[tito2502]

People should note that (despite the opinion of most) it is not the EU which keep kicking Microsoft but the European Courts, which is a different thing.

The EU are the ones who tried to outlaw OSS in France.

[Jussi Kukkonen]

tito2502, the European Court of Justice is a part of the EU -- it could be described as the Supreme Court of the EU, so I'm not sure what you are trying to say...