Microsoft to bend Vista SP1 under EU pressure

Microsoft on Wednesday agreed to make changes to Vista to avoid further retaliation by European Union over anti-competitive practices, according to news from Tech Digest. Bowing to pressure from Real, Symantec, and other firms, the Redmond company has agreed to rework its next service pack to meet its challengers' expectations. Higher-profile developers will have the option of a special software kit that will let them bypass Vista's PatchGuard, a technology meant to prevent malware from changing the OS itself but which has been attacked for shutting out non-Microsoft security tools from the deeper layers of the OS. Microsoft is also set to use Service Pack 1 to fulfill its earlier promise of a Vista edition stripped of Windows Media Player and will also give greater control over Internet Explorer 7's search engine choices, the report said.

The OS developer has been repeatedly asked to change the preloaded software for Windows in recent years, adding a program default control panel to Windows XP and allowing system builders to change browser and e-mail programs.