Win95 Lifecycle Draws to a Close

Mr_Perl writes "As many Everquest players discovered recently directx 8.1 is not being made for Windows 95, sending stores everywhere into a frenzy to slap little stickers over the words "Windows 95" on game box system requirements sections. Microsoft has picked November 30th, 2001 as the date that Win95 moves into the unsupported phase of it's career, making it even more useless to those who still keep it around for playing the latest games. Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003."

Comments

Timing

[cdensch]

Assuming win95 actually came out in 95 (I'm too lazy to look it up) that's not a bad track record for an OS - people are obviously still using it, although it probably won't beat the 3 years I got out of DRDOS 6.0...

Hummm...

[Sharkyfour]

Does anyone else find it odd that all verions of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 are supported by Microsoft longer than Win95? They've still got another couple of weeks on 'em for some reason... Nothing major, just seems... odd. I'm probably missing something since I should have been asleep 4 hours ago. ;-)

Isnt non NT (win32) all the same anyway?

[jgaynor]

Besides intentionally crippling the software, why would something work on one win32 distro and not on another? At the core they're basically the same. My understandiung is that their differences lie in bells, whistles and included driver support.

I can understand NT/win32 differences but this seems like another "mandatory upgrade" scheme.

Weird

[J.C.B.]

If you look on the Windows lifecycle page you'll see that MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 will become unsupported a month after Windows 95. Is it me, or is that really f*cked up?

DOS and 3.x supported longer than 95

[Sits]

* MS DOS x.xx (December 31, 2001)
* Windows 3.xx (December 31, 2001)
* Windows 95 (November 30, 2001)

I guess my 3.11 loving friend had a point when he said it wasn't obsolete...

Re:Here's why

[rjamestaylor]

Now

• that's

insightful.