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Retired Microsoft Operating Systems Still Popular
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Despite Microsoft's recent retirement of Windows 98, News.com reports that many users continue to cling to the company's older operating systems. The study cited in the article suggests that 80 percent of companies still have machines operating on Windows 95 or 98. While Windows 2000 was the most common OS in the study, just 6.6 percent of the desktop machines included in the survey were running Windows XP." The results aren't too surprising. I get a lot of user mail from Netscape 4 users, and it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere.
I still use it for my kids games and educational software....the newer ones DON'T WORK...hmmmmm
Back in the 80s and early 90s, desktop machines were still by and large a new thing for many companies. Not only did many not really have a USE for them, they upgraded because they believed the marketing that said "Thou shalt need this upgrade"
Now, most people (managers especially) have a decade or more of computer use experience under their belt, perhaps even two, and can get a good idea for themselves of what a computer can actually do for them. Ten years experience seeing that a two-yearly upgrade cycle just leaves you with More Of The Same instead of something really new means people are seeing computers as just the tools they are, rather than something awe-inspiring that can solve their every problem
It's like Graphic User Interfaces - they're a hell of a lot more complex now than the original Mac, but that's OK. The original mac was introduced to people who'd never seen a computer before, let alone a GUI. Nowadays, by the time someone buys their first computer with their own money, they're buying a machine with an interface they already have YEARS of getting used to using, and the extra complexity has been learned into them from age 5.
A lot of Mac users are on Mac OS 8.x or 9.x as well, or using the Classic environment to run applications for OS 9.x under Mac OS X.
It seems that when people buy a computer, they expect the software to last as long as the hardware.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Her machine had 32 megs of RAM and a P166 MMX processor.
As it turned out, Windows 95 plus Internet Explorer ran blazing rings around Debian Linux plus Mozilla, which was almost unusable, even after I switched her over to icewm and rxvt rather than the much heavier KDE environment. Eventually I found Skipstone, which made her machine usable again, but only barely. To be quite honest, there is no Linux/browser combination that compares with the performance Windows 95/Internet Explorer can offer on that class of hardware, and there's no good reason to throw away a perfectly nice older laptop.
Eventually, though, she upgraded to a Dell Latitude XPi which runs Linux much more comfortably -- although I still switched her to icewm and streamlined her startup drastically to get a reasonable boot time.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
The apple II's had a very common data acquisition mobo that allowed all sorts of physics experiments to be done. You could measure temperature in real time, trace a trajectory, and do other neat stuff. Why upgrade when these experiments work just fine with the old apples?
It's physics, not computer science. The data is important, not the computer that records it.
You say
Windows 98 is 70% of why I have a job.
If companies realized just how much money they dump into fixing all of the problems Windows 98 is privy to, they'd all be on Windows XP.
When I upgrade users to Windows 2000/XP I immediately stop getting Operating System related calls. Suddenly my only work is occassional malware, "my network is down", etc..
Windows 98 is a horrible product, and it's a liability to most small businesses. Most of my clients would have saved hundreds of dollars to make the jump.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
You also have to take into consideration that some large companies also don't care about IT. Try for example your second rate credit card company, or a company that may be on its way downhill. I've worked for companies where IT isn't important yet IT is what drives their business. One thing I've learned to watch out for is any company trying to run a Java solution on an AS/400... If you're that far behind the times and can't spell WebSphere than a Win2k is not something you're going to understand. Simply put, big companies don't care either because small amounts of their people ever focus on IT. Why should they? The execs already made their money.
here you can have a look at google's statistics - statisctics of "who is using google?"
I think that major difference 6.6 % of XP users versus 38 % of XP users is caused by a very simple thing: win95/98 users are not connected to internet thus, they are not using google.
based on this, news's survey is very likely to be true
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I work for an ISP. I see alot (well hear) of companies still running on Win95 and 98. When I ask why the answers I usually get are "Why? This is working for us just fine!" and "We would love too but shelling out thousands for new hardware, the OS, upgrading the current programs, and training just isn't worth it."
/. seem to forget that a good 90% of users only know how to run certain programs in windows and thats it. Once they deviate from that, forget it, they are totally lost. The cost in training someone to use a newer OS and the programs associated it can sometimes run into the hundreds of thousands depending on the size of a company.
I think alot of people on
One other thing to keep in mind is that most mid to smaller level companies do not have onsite IT people. They will either higher outside integrators who charge by the hour or just wing it and hope that the existing set up continues to work for as long as possible. In both situations the company is very very hesident to upgrade as it will cost a ton of money to effectivly get the same results as now.
Well, Apples have traditionally been used in the study of gravity, dating back to Newton's time. It only makes sense they are used in a physics class.
Because it's not profitable? I imagine the costs for producing those things is not that much lower than the costs for producing newer computers, and those newer computers sell for a whole lot more, so it only makes sense not to make the old machines anymore.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Computers are not as important in computer science as one might think. Of course, for some technology-related courses you will need state-of-the-art, but computer science is about algorithms, structuring data and abstracting problems. Sometimes pen-and-paper will suffice but the programming you can do on a very old computer just as well as on a water-cooled Pentium-4 5000. The principles remain the same, and that's what matters.
MS OS/2 1.0 was not EOL.
It was abandoned by MS at 1.2 so that 3COM's 3+Open and IBM's PC Server OS's that built on top of it would have to react and lose market share.
MS was in an agreement with IBM and 3COM that allowed them to take advantage of the developments of the other two while leaving them in the cold. IBM tried to pick up development of OS/2 (including WARP), but that is a different story.
NT, Win2K, and XP all use the "net xxx" commands that were the heart of 3COM's OS even before the "alliance" with Microsoft. I think this is why Bob Metcalfe seems to hate Gates with such a passion.
"Come into my den said the spider to the fly."
~8^]
Don't laugh, it works. Despite all the whizbang marketing from Redmond, most busineses are extremely pragmatic. If all you need is a {print,file,login} server, linux will happily work on hardware later Microsoft OSes have no hope of running on.
Prediction: there'll be huge uptake of linux when Microsoft kills off support of nt4 server, because no one is going to want to take the double hit of replacing all the hardware and buying all new OS licenses. Not to mention new and different security headaches due to exponential increases in complexity, increased lock-in, restrictive EULAs, etc.
"The interface is clean and simple -- not like the fruity looking XP default one. With a little tweaking (and a good firewall, of course), you can make it relatively secure too."
Well with a little tweaking, you can make Windows XP look like Windows 2000 as well.
"Yes, I know MS sucks, but they did a great job with Win2k."
I have been running Windows XP Professional for a while now and although I am, as well, not too fond of the way Microsoft goes about business, (I hate them with a particularly fiery passion regarding their purchase of Bungie Software...) I admit that Windows XP, if used correctly will work better than Windows 2K, dare I say, even good enough for me to get stuff done, and even on a regular basis.
My computer is a custom build, I leave it on all the time, and I do all sorts of wierd things to it. It has survived - there is life after Microsoft. My ability to do this (leave it on, have it work under stress) actually increased after upgrading to XP (and a bit more when upgrading to XP pro) and increased a lot when I ditched my HP Laptop and went to this custom rig.
Of course, I also get MS Windows XP Pro from my college bookstore for $6.00, so if it weren't for the piracy busting price, I would be all over linux like a bum on a ham sandwich.
Now I see that MS is pushing licensing scheme that makes it difficult to donate old Machines. Schools don't even want the older computers because all they care about is cheap tech support and surfing the internet. How many MSCE have the depth of knowledge to work on an old DOS machine or any apple? But if I were teaching programming, I would rather have enough machines so I could have every student in the school learn the logic of programming rather than just the lucky few who signed up first. Likewise, if i were teaching math or science, i would like every team to have their own computer so that could do their demonstrations and simulations. And I would want them to be old so that is all they could do.
Of course, modern machines are necessary when you are teaching Visual Studio and MS office. For the Vocational training stuff, this is defensible. But for the more basic classes, fast machines are really just a luxury.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Find a used PC store in your area (there's at least one in most cities) or even get chummy with the proprietors of the "independent" computer shops. They typically have older systems for around $200 including monitor. If you're buying a couple systems, they may cut you a no-monitor deal.
It took about two years and $5M dollars in hardware costs and MS License fees, plus the costs of 3rd party software replacements, to switch our organization from Win3.11FWG. Currently we replace a couple of PCs a week, and they come with W2K pre-installed, so our Win95 counts are dropping as our Win2K counts rise.
Our XP count remains minicule. We cannot use XP on most workstations because of its EULAs which demand that MS and certain 3rd party vendors be given remote access to our hardware to 'add or remove any software' they wish -- for 'security' reasons, of course. A very big Federal agency refuses to allow us to allow that, not suprisingly, so that their data remains safe while in our keeping.
That means that when the EOL for W2K has passed, and the channel is emptied of W2K shrink-wraps, our new PCs will come naked or with Linux pre-installed. Our bulk licenses allow us to move Win OSs around, but the new PCs will have hardware for which no Win95 or Win2K drivers exist. When that day arrives Microsoft will have truely locked themselves out of our shop. That scenerio would change over night if Gates modified his EULAs and didn't require remote access, but I doubt his greed or paranoia would allow such a policy change.
Windows XP has nothing that Windows 2000 has for the corperate environment that is worth a damn... and that was stupid of microsoft to do.
My company is standardized on windows 2000. When we evaluated XP, the only real benefit was the built-in terminal server which allows the helpdesk to connect to the clueless user's computer to see what is really going on.
Aside from that, no upside. The downside is large (software cost, activation hassle, necessary hardware upgrades) so we're sticking with win2k.
The apple ][gs from 1986 is capable of doing everything the average person does with their pc
Yeah, but it takes six months to rip a CD.
Had the organization stayed with Win2K, this never would have come up.
Realistically, Windows 98 is probably the last version of Windows that can be reasonably kept from calling home, and has a higher probability of not having some kind of government back door. You think MS got a slap on the wrist in the antitrust action for free?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
The biggest problem is that MS changes the file formats.
Your a small business and run Win98 machines with Office 97. Good enough you would say. That is until your largest customer is sending you files done in Office XP and you can't open them. The short term answer is to call them up and ask them to save it in an older format. Boy does that make you look like a shabby outfit. The other solution is to go out and upgrade the Office suite. Which may requrire you to upgrade the OS. Of course now you are running XP on a 200 MHZ PII and it runs like crap.
I think as a home user you can get away with an older OS but it is difficult to as a business.
This came out in the "anti-trust" trial, remember?
Windows is supposed to run slower with each new version, so you will have to buy current hardware to run it, at new-technology prices, so that the cost of the Windows OS, as a proportion of the total price of the delivered computer, will stay below a level they figured is likely to trigger a consumer revolt.
There's nothing accidental about it.
90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame.
This is very true and I think it will come back and bite Linux in the ass eventually. Most people switching to Linux from MS right now are knowledgable. They are the people that know how to set up a proper network and keep it running. As the common people switch to Linux, they will encounter many of the same problems they encountered on Windows, except they won't have any idea how to deal with them. They will end up switching back to their Windows boxes because they at least have an idea how to deal with things on that.
I think we'll see a lot of people switch to Linux, but then we'll see a decent portion of them switch back as they realize their problems weren't caused by MS, but by their own lack of knowledge.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"