Comments on: Sorry, Windows, but where’s the PDF reader?

By: James

James — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:31:04 +0000

@chrisw Print to pdf is not included in Office for the same reason it isn’t included in the OS. Namely that as Microsoft is deemed to have a monopoly with Windows they aren’t allowed to bundle functionality into the OS that is deemed anti-competitive.

Basically they can’t include their own pdf generation tools because that wouldn’t be fair to Adobe. Apple aren’t affected by their market share isn’t large enough for competition law to be an issue.

I am sure Microsoft would love to be able to include pdf generation as part of the OS but they can’t.

By: George

George — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:43:39 +0000

@Nick. Didn’t realise that pressing the spacebar on a highlighted file in finder popped up the preview window, thanks for that. On a more puzzled note why doesn’t it work when you highlight a file in the springboard folders? I though that Macs were all about consistency, I would have expected that since I was still in finder inside the springboard folder that I would get the same functionality there too.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:49:19 +0000

I know it’s been said, but I had to again… the EU surely would have put and end to it if they included their own!

By: Chris Thompson

Chris Thompson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:47:13 +0000

Oh give me a break. I can’t believe you would whine about that. You must be equally sad that the installation CD didn’t come with a mint on your pillow.

By: chrisw

chrisw — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:54:22 +0000

Don’t see the problem with downloading the free Adobe PDF viewer the first time you need it, although I wish Adobe would get rid of the constant nagware about updates etc. As for printing to PDF, I don’t see why MS Office can’t do this by default, even if it’s a licencing issue. After all, product costs enough anyway, and the free OpenOffice suite has been able to do this for years. I suspect it’s partly M$ sulking because people want to use a non-M$ format.

Oh, and a lot of the whinging about the EU and Microsoft is misplaced: if M$ were capable of building properly tested, componentised software, then it would have been easy enough to allow for optional components like the browser etc which prompted so much trouble in the first place. The fact that M$ claimed they had to rip apart their operating software to permit such a simple modification tells you more about M$ and their monolithic bloatware than it does about the EU.

By: R

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:26:46 +0000

Ok maybe I was a bit harsh. Apologies. Pdf is a good format but whether it should come included is a matter for the courts nowadays rather than whats best for us the consumer.

I like Windows 7 but its far from the vision I or others thought it would be. The engine is still Vista/2008.

The story is still not news worthy

By: MartinC

MartinC — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:53:21 +0000

Does Windows 7 even include native viewers for doc, xls, docx, xlsx files? Earlier versions of Windows didn’t and there’s no anticompetitive argument there.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:39:48 +0000

@Jen: Yes indeed. They may be under the impression that it’s witty, the poor souls.

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:44:40 +0000

Dont you just hate people who write M$ when they mean Microsoft?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:24:53 +0000

I make PDF files from Office 2007. You spend all of one minute installing the “save as PDF/XPS” add-in, and it works. Those that don’t need it won’t take up unnecessary space with it.

Why should microsoft install a pdf reader when there are already so many good free ones? People would only complain about the increasingly bloated size of the OS…