XP Stripped Down for South Korea

Microsoft said Wednesday that it would release a stripped-down version of Windows XP in South Korea in order to comply with the country's recent antitrust ruling. As ordered, the special version of XP would come without Windows Media Player or Windows Messenger. The Redmond company was fined $34 million in December, and found guilty of violating the country's anti-trust laws by the Korean Fair Trade Commission.

The KFTC required Microsoft to either allow embedding of third-party programs into the operating system or remove messaging and multimedia functionality from it. Two versions of XP Home and Professional will be made available: one with messaging and multimedia functionality stripped completely, the other with it included, but also containing links to download third-party applications.