Vista and the EU
So Microsoft's opponents are once again wielding the government against Microsoft in the EU. In my opinion this is just a sleazy way of making both the EU and Microsoft waste a lot of time and money.
Wasting Microsoft's money is a reasonable goal for a competing company; but the EU should be smarter than to play into itand instead tell Real to stop crying and simply make a video player that people want to use.
Does Flash come with Vista? I don't actually know the answer, but it doesn't matter - if you don't have Flash you'll be downloading and installing it in short order, because so many sites require it and the installation is small and painless.
Adobe Reader's installation isn't small, but PDF is such a compelling format that people go out of their way to install that as well.
On the other hand, many people avoid RealPlayer and actually refuse to view content that's presented in that format, because of bad experiences with their software.
Real did this to themselves.
Being bundled with the OS is an advantage, but not a huge one - if your product is good enough, users will find it. I think being good enough should be a prerequisite for getting in the box.
Anyway, if I was in the EU I'd be buying Vista sooner than later, before Microsoft is forced to cripple it somehow. Did anyone actually want Windows XP N?