Alistair Thomas

Worcs

IT enthusiast, MS user

Microsoft have various antitrust judgements against them which require them to offer the OS without various bundled elements.

You could argue that they are being user-centric allowing the consumer (individual or enterprise) to buy just what they want and no more. They also get accused of producing bloatware, and certainly you don't want machines cluttered with or even loading software in background that never gets used.

Personally I would offer two products to all markets. A raw operating system that keeps the anti-monopolists happy and an everything-included version (Server and deskop being very different products with their own variants). You then cater for the 8 or more desirable installation configurations with user profiles. Choose a paticular profile and the machine is configured that way. You can change profiles if you wish and given profiles can expand with elements of functionality that are excluded in the original profile being brought in on demand.

Simply pricing, simple stock keeping and put the flexibility and choice at the user level where it might be appreciated. With Desktop and server variants mapped in umpteen different languages, 8 functional variants seems to be about 6 too many.

KISS