New Microsoft Applications Slow Down XP

Reimage’s internal reporting system has been showing that there is an increase in the number of repairs with the following combo: Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 11. So why are we seeing more of these upgrades? It seems like people that chose to stay with their old PC do not upgrade to Vista (here is an odd case. The reason may be that:

1. Their hardware wouldn’t support it well (too weak and Vista drivers that are needed for legacy hardware are sometimes hard to find).
2. It is expensive to pay for a new PC that also runs Vista well (it also may backfire at times), most people settle for their good old PC with good old XP but add to it latest updates from Microsoft.

However, newer versions of IE and WMP were designed for newer PCs and tested and optimized for Vista (and not for the discontinued XP)… XP users who try to maximize their experience by upgrading to IE8 and WMP11 absurdly get a slower and slower PC and a user experience which is worse than before!

This phenomena is called “bloatware“. Now, usually an obvious solution for bloatware is uninstalling the bloat and making it float by finding more lightweight alternatives (e.g. Foxit Reader instead of Acrobat Reader). However, after you’ve installed IE8 / WMP11 it is very hard to uninstall these applications especially if you’re not a geek.

References from the web:

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12551/new-media/slow-take-up-of-internet-explorer-8-on-day-one
http://www.freewarefiles.com/review_5_51_40237.html
http://forums.techguy.org/multimedia/544911-media-player-11-slow-load.html
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/30563022/windows-media-player-11-r.aspx
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=241585
http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=9699
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Media-Player-11-using-50-CPU-running-really-slow-t160970.html