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Microsoft Retires Windows 98

Posted by michael on from the porch-and-rocking-chair dept.

prostoalex writes "Complying with the court requirement related to Sun-Microsoft lawsuit over Java, Microsoft is retiring Windows 98, SQL Server 7, Office XP Developer Edition and some other products."

11 of 697 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good, now retire IE5 by larsoncc · · Score: 4, Informative

    IE 5.X is part of this forced retirement.

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    Video Game News, FAQs, etc
  2. Fortunately ... by IPFreely · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... Microsoft is not retiring Win98 SE, only versions of Win98 prior to SE. See this.

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    There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
  3. No, it does not include Win98 SE by leerpm · · Score: 4, Informative
    In the original full posting, they give the full list of all products being retired:

    Due to a settlement agreement reached in January 2001, the following products are being phased out and will no longer available to customers through MSDN Subscriber Downloads or other channels at Microsoft. These products will be removed from MSDN Subscriber Downloads as of December 15th, 2003.

    Office XP Developer
    Visio 2000
    BackOffice Server 2000
    Office 2000 Developer
    Office 2000 Tools
    Office 2000 Multilingual
    Office 2000 Premium SR-1
    Office 2000 Service Pack 2
    Outlook 2000
    Project 2000
    SQL Server 7
    SQL Server 7 Service Pack 3
    Embedded Visual Tools 3.0
    Visual Studio 6 MSDE
    IE 5.5
    MapPoint 2002
    Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 and SP5
    Windows 98
    Windows 98 Y2K
    Windows 98 Resource Kit
    Windows 98 SP1 (all win98 except SE)
    Windows NT 4.0
    ISA Server 2000
    Visual Basic for (Alpha Systems)

    The following product will be updated with Java-compliant versions before the 12/31/03 deadline: Office XP Professional with FrontPage
    Publisher 2002
    Windows NT 4.0
    Small Business Server 2000

  4. Re:Good, now retire IE5 by larsoncc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Full list of retired products, taken from MSDN board...

    > Office XP Developer
    > Visio 2000
    > BackOffice Server 2000
    > Office 2000 Developer
    > Office 2000 Tools
    > Office 2000 Multilingual
    > Office 2000 Premium SR-1
    > Office 2000 Service Pack 2
    > Outlook 2000
    > Project 2000
    > SQL Server 7
    > SQL Server 7 Service Pack 3
    > Embedded Visual Tools 3.0
    > Visual Studio 6 MSDE
    > IE 5.5
    > MapPoint 2002
    > Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 and SP5
    > Windows 98
    > Windows 98 Y2K
    > Windows 98 Resource Kit
    > Windows 98 SP1 (all win98 except SE)
    > Windows NT 4.0 (Terminal Server and Option Pack)
    > ISA Server 2000
    > Visual Basic for (Alpha Systems)
    >
    > The following products will be updated to versions that do not contain the
    > Microsoft Virtual Machine:
    >
    > Office XP Professional with FrontPage
    > Publisher 2002
    > Windows NT 4.0 (Workstation, Server, Enterprise Server)
    > Small Business Server 2000

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  5. Re:Truly Sad..... by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Informative
    > Ironically, Win98se has been Microsoft's most secure operating system for the last two years!

    Flamebait?

    A Win98SE box runs no services. No DCOM, no RPC, no IIS, no "Remote Support", no MSN. With a couple of tweaks to rebind (or unbind) NetBIOS, it listens on no ports.

    Use a third-party email client and a third-party browser to avoid the Outleak/IE holes, and the poster's right. For a clued-in user (i.e. someone smart enough not to click on every stupid attachment some bozo mails him), Win98SE is more secure than XP.

    Is Win98 a good operating system? Hell no. It's a glorified DOS shell. Get your trojan running anywhere on that machine, and j00 0wn t3h b0x. But in order for that to happen, the end user pretty much has to cooperate.

  6. Win98 is still popular by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to Google, Windows 98 is the second most used operating system of the world. It had 30% market share of all web users at September.

    Source:
    http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.h tml

  7. /not/ court-ordered by dewdrops · · Score: 3, Informative

    In spite of what MSNBC says (nice job moderators; linking to a story written by an obivously biased news source...), the court order doesn't require MS to stop distributing these products. The court order says that MS has to ship Windows with a Java VM (and not the MS "Java" VM which is not really Java). They've known this was coming for years; they could've updated the products to use a real JVM (as they did with many other products/verions), but, instead decided to stop distributing these old products. Blaming the court order is ridiculous.

  8. It doesn't force upgrades. by BoomerSooner · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can still use your product, MS is just shelving the ability for you to get it. This was on the MSDN site a while ago. Here's the text:

    Subscriber Download content will be retired on December 23rd
    Due to a settlement agreement reached in January 2001, Microsoft is phasing out the Microsoft Virtual Machine from its products. As of 12:01 AM Pacific Time December 23rd, 2003, we will phase out several product families, and remove the Microsoft Virtual Machine from others. The major product families that will no longer be available are:

    BackOffice Server 2000
    MapPoint 2002
    Office 2000 Suite and Products
    Office XP Developer
    SQL Server 7.0
    Windows 98

    Although these products will no longer be available for distribution from Microsoft, they can still be used in accordance with the terms of your MSDN Subscription license agreement.

  9. Final Security Patches Released for Windows 98 by khamar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of course, the real issue here is ongoing updates for software bugs - most of which are security patches. In the absence of Microsoft providing these patches for Windows 98, the community has released a series of patches for Windows 98 that are not available from Microsoft. These critical patches are available from http://linuxiso.org/

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  10. Re:for better? or for worse? by SEE · · Score: 3, Informative

    If Win98 were open-sourced, it would be a matter of months before enough chunks were absorbed into WINE to make its Win32 support perfect.

    Similarly, tweaking DOSEMU and modifying Win98 (a la the modified Windows 3.1 of Win-OS/2, which can run in DOSEMU) would be fairly easy, since Win98 is architecturally so similar to DOS plus Win 3.1's 386 enhanced mode.

    Mainstream OSS talent would be diverted into those projects and the improving Win98 projects, sure. But mainstream computer dollars would be lost by Microsoft to both a Linux that can run Win32 programs as well as XP, and a "Winux" that is Linux to the hardware and power users but modified and improved Win98 to the ordinary user and his software. (In the latter case, BSODs would still happen, but they'd cause the underlying Linux to quick-load another Windows session.)

    I expect "Winux" would quickly become the favorite OS of computer makers; free and looks just like the familar Windows environment. Microsoft would lose hundreds of millions.

  11. Re:Upgrade by symbolic · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't ask KFC to reveal their "seven herbs and spices" do you?

    This isn't even a fair comparison. If I don't like KFC, for whatever reason, my decision to go somewhere else (or even make my own) will be virtually without cost. Why? Because chicken isn't closed-source. If I decide I don't like Microsoft, I always have to weigh my options against the very real cost of installing and learning a new OS, converting my old documents, potential compatibility issues, etc. Why? Because Microsoft is closed-source, and is often, by design, incompatible with other potential options.