The Microsoft eco system consists of thousands of services and applications provided by 3rd parties. However, the foundation of this system is provided by Microsoft’s services, applications and it’s Operating System. When these are suddenly not reliable anymore the eco system is suddenly not stable at all.

And there have been three large cracks in the near past which should make everyone worry who bases his or her IT on Microsoft’s products: PlayForSure, Outlook Express/Hotmail, and to some degree even OOXML.

PlayForSure

PlayForSure (DRM codename: Janus) was introduced by Microsoft in 2004/2005 to mark players which have been certified to follow Microsoft’s dream list: Windows Media Player compatibility, DRM support, MTP-only support, and so on. Originally this was also an attempt to push Ogg Vorbis out of the field.

The basic idea was that every player could be used on any Windows System which had Windows Media Player 10 installed. And that every player would play any music sold in any PlayForSure store.

Outlook Express and Hotmail

Outlook Express is an e-mail client shipped with all Microsoft versions since Windows 98 and before Windows Vista, although it was responsible for many large scaled virus attacks.

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