Missed the boat.

IE..

This focus on IE and WMP by the EU just makes them look silly. There are (from what I've read here) many, far worse anti-competitive practices going on, but it always comes down to IE and WMP.

If the EU want to make a point, and level the marketplace properly then they should just ban the selling of anything except barebones systems, and ban the bundling of any commercial software, and ban unfair licensing agreements etc.

That way people have to make an active choice at the time of purchase. The cost of the products becomes more obvious.

More difficult? Maybe

Will result in better informed customers? Probably

Will result in fairer pricing? Should Do

Will result in better informed in-store support staff? You can only teach a monkey so much..

Fairer competition? Definitely.

Then people who want Windows will have to actively go out of their way to buy it. The main problem is that right now it's the default, and many, people will just stick with the default if they don't have to think about it.

Removing IE and Media Player achieves nothing except for making it clear that the EU just don't get 'it'. All that will happen is that people will click through defaults, and end up downloading them as part of some other update package anyway.

The bundling and hidden costs are a far bigger problem.