What exactly is XPS?

Does it have a chance of replacing pdf as a standard?

Is it worth keeping the Win 7 XPS components installed?

XPS is Microsoft's attempt at a universal document format as PDF is Adobe's.

It allows Microsoft to include this functionality without having to adhere to the PDF standard.

At the moment the file size alone will, I feel, prevent XPS making any inroads into the domination of PDF in the market.

If Microsoft include a killer function in XPS that is not possible with PDF then it may do better but even then I think that it will be virtually impossible to even approach the dominance of PDF.

The fact that XPS is inbuilt into the OS may have an effect but at the moment it is not being pushed that hard even by Microsoft, who produce PDF versions of all their XPS downloadable documents

If XPS is an alternative to PDF, why is there a XPS Writer in my print preferences. Why can't XPS simply use my real printer?

The XPS writer printer is designed to allow you to take any application and convert whatever print output it would make into an XPS file. For example, if you used something like Microsoft Visio to make a network map, you could send it through the XPS printer and get an XPS file that you could share with somebody and then they wouldn't need the Visio program to open it.

Okay, I guess it's one of the many things MS wise that I shall never use.