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Windows 98 Phased Out
Via_Patrino writes "According to Microsoft on january 16, MS Windows 98 and 98se will end Extended Support Phase, that means they'll became obsolete and assisted support will no longer be available from Microsoft, affecting about 27% of the internet users. That means even if 98 is working well for your needs (and especially computer specifications) and you want to pay for support (because that might cost less than switching hardware) you can't, because who will be able to patch eventual new bugs (security related or not) besides Microsoft? So if you're not planning a switch it might be your last opportunity to update MS Windows 98, after that some software might disappear from MS website (just like MSIE 5.5 for 95 did)."
Why? People don't typically switch until they get a new PC. Witness the Google zeitgeist; though people are using Windows XP more, it is more than likely due to it being bundled with new PCs. (Consider how long XP has been out, as compared to how much it has been used. Also factor in that those XP and 2000 numbers liekly account for most of the corporate world.) There are a considerable number of people still using Windows 98, and it is likely to stay that way.
For home users who need Office, internet, and a gaming platform, Windows 98SE upgraded and patched does everything they need. It also runs reasonably fast on today's hardware, and there are a lot of "ain't broke, don't fix" people out there. There's really no compelling reason for people to switch, so they won't until they get a new PC.
libertarianswag.com
On December 31, 2003, Redhat discontinued support for Redhat 7.3 and on April 30, 2004, Redhat 9, released less than a year ago, gets the support axe.
When compared to that, I think Microsoft has been damn generous. And if you look at my posting profile, you see i don't cut Microsoft much slack either...
that does not mean 27% of internet users use Windows 98. THere are many people who just use e-mail and hardly ever use google.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
I work in a k12 environment, and this is going to be bad for us. We use win98 because its NOT a multi user operating system.
A lot of schools have netware/win98 combos.
Since win2k/XP require logins, we have to resort to novell zenworks to manage the automatic creation of machines accounts (our servers can handle it) or switching to AD (what ms wants, but our servers cant handle it).
This blows.
OS X, it's like Linux but a lot more expensive...
And all the windows98 users would have to buy a new computer as OS X doesn't run on i386.
From a Network Support position at a University, I almost wished they discontinued Windows Me before they did 98. We have more problems with ME than any other OS, mostly due to it being a peice of shit.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Anyone who is happy with Windows 98 should not be required to upgrade just because Microsoft can't be bothered to support a product they created and sold to end users. God forbid that the needs of these consumers, for whome Win98 is just fine, should be paramount.
... or, be supported by someone else. That's probably about as likely as a spontaneous mutation in Bill Gate's eyeball creating a separate human species which lives on tears and speaks only Esperanto.
Either that, or Microsoft should give these users the opportunity to support themselves. They are obviously not going to make any more money from Windows 98, they should open the source so that people who don't need to upgrade can support themselves
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
If you leaped direct from Windows 98 to OS X it's not surprising that you feel great relief.
A switch from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 is a similar jump in quality and reliability. However, one doesn't have to throw away all one's apps and start over again.
Not that I could ever bear to live in a world with just Windows 2000. There are many good choices. I even use MacOS for some things.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Microsoft's support phases last a lot longer than most proprietary software companies out there.
I expect that the next big virus will knock a bunch of the remaining 98 computers offline once Microsoft stops making patches. Zone Labs will probably experience a small surge in downloads of their free firewall product.
Anyone who is happy with Windows 98 should not be required to upgrade
Where's the gun to the head?
Oh, wait -- they're not forced to upgrade!
You're just grabbing at straws trying to find things to bitch about regarding Microsoft. Red Hat drops support WAY sooner than Microsoft ever does (it's been 5 years for Windows 98 -- Redhat discontinued support for Redhat 7.3 at the end of last year and that's way newer than Windows 98.)
But no, instead of reasoning with your brain, you are going to play the part of the anti-Micro"$"oft troll.
evil adrian
As long as you have personal information on your laptop then you SHOULD worry about locking-down the computer and getting patches from MS.
Operating Systems have a limited lifespan - don't tell me you hadn't noticed? RedHat doesn't support every single distribution they've ever compiled, and there's a reason for that: it's not the way the software industry works.
Sure, there are lots of people out there using Win98 still. Heck, there are still people using Win95! But can you really expect a company to invest in support for a product that is 3 generations out of date? For each OS a company (regardless of whether they're Microsoft, RedHat or Apple) it is necessary to have a testing environment, testing staff, developers, marketing, and who knows what else. Microsoft currently support Windows ME, 2000, 2003 and XP. Surely that's an impressive amount of supported products?
Or perhaps we should demand they support everything they make forever. You never know, there might be one or two Windows 3.1 users out there who still want hotfixes released. I have some DOS 3 floppy disks lying around, surely I'm entitled to lifetime support for these!
Typically enough though, this is Slashdot - every decision by Microsoft has to be wrong, evil, unthinkably unfair. And the link to linux under the word "switch" is a good example of how biased this site has become. After all, I don't see the same level of screaming about me being forced to switch my RedHat 7.0 and 8.0 boxes over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux... surely that is a far more shameful lack of support?
You're correct that you don't have to throw away all the apps, but there is a non-trivial number that no longer funtion. I blue-screened W2k after a reinstall because of my burner software. I had a similar problem going to XP. But, despite the incompatibility of some apps, I agree that the 98 -> W2k migration will lead to a massive improvement in quality and reliability.
Note: I'm just comparing 98 and W2k. I still agree that OS X and/or Linux are better, but that's just MHO.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
Except that, Red Hat's source is open. If you have a computer that runs Red Hat 6, you can support yourself indefinitely. You cannot do that with WIndows 98. You will be required to upgrade to have support with Microsoft's OS. You should think about what I said before you mouth off like an idiot.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Newer is not ALWAYS better!! Just look at winamp? I have no plans on giving up my winamp 2.90. Windows 98? Yeah, i agree, it sucked. I dumped that OS as soon as i got the thing. NT Pro treated me so well for so many years...
Really, who actually calls Microsoft for support anymore? It's both expensive and usually an act of futility. Even the non-computer savvy usually call Dell or whoever they bought their PCs from instead.
The real problem is there will be no new patches and maybe old patches will no longer be available from windows update. The big reason it's a problem is people *won't* upgrade just because of this. Most hardly care about patches now, but may at least be coaxed into running windows update now and again.
This won't push the holdouts over to XP (which they probably don't even have a new enough computer to run well) - it'll just result in even *more* unpatched trojan-friendly PC out there.
Do Win98 users really need official support from MS? I know nothing about M$ world, but if it is anything like the Mac world, then there should be a healthy range of thriving independent online support forums for obsolete hardware and software (You can even get support for ancient 68k Macs at places like Applefritter and 68k Mac Liberation Army. Official support from the official vendor is not really needed as long as someone out there has the answer to your question or can help point you in the right direction.
The only reason a computer user needs "official" support is if they have a pinhead boss or are worried about patches for security holes...... Oh, I see the problem now. Even so Win98 should be "usable" for decades to come if its users form a devoted community that provides mutual support.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I know that everyone is going to this is all just a ploy by M$ to force people to upgrade to newer, expensive software (and is almost certainly so), but no software company is required to support obsolete versions of their software forever, this is not a reasonable idea. The /.'ers frothing at the mouth about this are the same ones who are first to also froth about how bad an OS Windows 98 is.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There are several issues with that:
* First, as others have mentioned, this may imply buying a new computer. Yes, US$200 can buy a computer well capable of running Windows XP. That is not much for a typical US household. A poor student in a third world country may have more of a problem.
* Some software, that runs on Windows 98, does not run successfully on Windows XP (and especially on Windows 2000). Sure, such software is usually woefully written but, if users rely on it, so what?
* Windows 98 SE came out in various language versions. In many cases, equivalent comfort levels for non English speakers are not readily available in Windows 2000 or XP. While the NT based systems allow input and output of the appropriate characters, this is not the same as having menus and error messages in ones native language. With 2000 and XP, multilingual user interface packs exist for many of the languages with specific language Windows 98 versions. These packs are only available to corporate customers.
* There is the cost of buying the new Windows version.
Obviously, Microsoft's priority is to make the maximum amount of money. Fair enough. But, the users need to consider how to get the functionality they need at minimum long term cost. If they need to change their operating system and some of their other software, perhaps they should consider an operating system that allows them to keep their existing hardware and that is less likely to require disruptive changes in the future.
Exactly!
And why should I be forced to upgrade by this money hungry corporation? Why should my version of Windows 98 simply stop working on the 16th. And shouldn't I have been given more of a warning than 12 days?
Oh wait, Windows 98 will still keep working after the 16th? But I thought the summary implied... oh, nevermind.
There's a small problem with that.. M$ will lose a lot more ground to us if they do that. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest, most overwhelming problem to desktop linux is GUI. If my gut's telling me right, I'm betting that M$ will move to a BSD kernel variant like Mac OS X did, and simply port their GUI over top of it. Then, who knows what will happen to the NT and 9x kernels, they might get open sourced after all.. but not until Bill Gates dies....... or hell freezes over, whichever happens first.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I dunno man.
Personally I didn't mind windows 98 until recently. Now I use Linux and XP, neither ever really has to be restarted unless i'm installing something in XP's case.
I guess all i'm saying is no one ever really minds 98 until you use something that doesn't crash all the time.
PS: Virus scan and Adaware work on XP too.
But the /. community seems to be once again forgetting... we're a very small slize of the whole of people that actually use a computer.
a very small slice.
For most people, rebooting Win9x is just fine for them, becuase they use their machines for fucking around for an hour a day. It works, they know how to use it, its got solitare.
These people are not only afraid of fucking something up by installing a new Windows OS on their machine, but they're simply afraid of doing it, period. People fear their machines; and if the elves in the magic box are still willing to work, well, we just dont want to fuck that up.
Then consider the fact that for many people, paying $300 or $200 or $100 or even only $40 to upgrade their operating system is simply more money than they [ can afford | are willing ] to spend on their computer.
On top of that, they probably werent even aware there was support for Win98 in the first place.
i'm just sayin.
s'wut i sed.
All these posts about the "idiots who use windows 98 should be shot" or "they should all switch to linux so they can fix their own bugs" is stupid and it misses the point. People who use windows 98 have old computers. They would buy a nice shiny new computer but they don't have the money or desire. They could find a pirate copy of windows xp but their hardware couldn't handle it. Support for windows 98 has gone on a long time. I'd rather the time be put into longhorn development to make it more stable and secure than time put into patching windows 98.
And these people aren't going to switch to linux. Didn't you see that 1% piece of the pie? I found suse and mandrake to seem a lot slower than windows xp on my p4 1.8 so I don't think on older pentium 2 hardware anyone's going to enjoy the performance of kde over windows 98.
Yeah, a lot of people here spend a lot of their time on computers. They love to hunt out bugs and recompile their kernels. But a lot of people don't and it's very elitest to put them down for doing so. Just because you're gentoo installation runs 8% faster than my windows xp installation, doesn't mean you'll have anymore insight into how computers work for people.
What is so wrong with the NT kernel? It's probably one of the best in the world. It's all the shit on top of it that's screwed up.
BTW, Apple didn't use a BSD kernel. They used a modified version of Mach called xnu which was actually carried over from NeXTStep. Sure, the userland is based on FreeBSD 5.x. The kernel is a totally different story. Mach != BSD
Open source is the answer. If the source is available, you can 1) write your own drivers, or repair problems that appear with the OS after official support ends; 2) pay another person to provide you with support; or 3) a combination of the two. Without the source, you can do none of the above, and must upgrade if you want support. The fact that any given scanner and webcam don't work with the OS is a minor impediment, at best, as is evidenced by the thousands of drivers available for hardware in Linux, for example, that do not have official drivers for Linux. Winmodems, for crying out loud, many of them anyway, have drivers for Linux. This is a direct consequence of open source.
Microsoft addicted those users to Windows 98, and is responsible for their care and feeding. If they don't feel they can do it profitably, then they should release the source for the OS so that others can provide them with support that Microsoft won't. Ford may not officially support repairs on the '65 Mustang anymore, but the open nature of vehicles generally makes a huge, huge after-market economy possible. Hell, even if Microsoft doesn't open the source via any FSF-compatible license, they could easily both make a ton of extra money, and foster a huge after-market profit source for a new sector of the tech economy by making the source available. Whatever way you look at it, it's a mistake, and there are better ways for Microsoft to handle it.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Win95 wasn't nearly as bloated as later versions. I was impressed to see it run on a 386 with 4mb of ram with minimal problems and a fast response speed. But I found Win98SE to be quite stable and user friendly, although bloated, and was only forced to upgrade when I wanted to install Visual Studio .NET. It even came with a stripped down version of IIS, Personal Web Server, which they took out of XP Home.
I think they felt they put too much into Win98. Possibly done to encourage people to upgrade to 2000 or XP Pro, a quick trip to Windows Update with a Win98 PC will now impair it so that you can no longer install Personal Web Server from the Windows install CD, requiring you to manually find and install an additional update, or upgrade to a newer version of Windows.
The reason they'll be forced to is because if they don't, within a year putting your win98 box on the internet means it bluescreening instantly from viruses. Blaster caused enough havok, what if a script kiddie can creat new blasters? There are tons of win98 boxes still running, not patching them may creat a gigantic hemmorage for the internet itself.
As for redhat, you can upgrade for free. Most of the time, upgrading a linux cluster means you get one machine, test out the kernel and whatnot on it for a week or so, and if it works you update the rest of the cluster. Besides, althogh I am a novice with linux I really don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to update your software unless you are lazy.
And finally, why don't you give the flaming a rest? It does nothing but offend the parent poster and creat a bunch of nitpicky people. We're all in this together remember, it's better if you make peace with people than tear their heads off.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
isn't there a stanza that requires that when microsoft wishes to terminate the liscence you must destroy all copies of said software(windows 98) and delete it off your hard drive? i mean, really who actually reads and follows eula, but isn't this a reason to switch somewhere else? I Thought that microsoft had cancelled all the win98 liscences long ago, mabye about a year ago, but if i was mistaken and they are doing it just now, perhaps that could be right too(i was trying to set my modem/internet account up with local telco sasktel, and they told me that they would not even set an account up for me unless i had something higher than windows 98...and i was running either dos shell on top of MSDOS 6.2 or windows 3.1 ...).
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Oh, wait -- they're not forced to upgrade!
Wait until you ask for an XP activation code after MS has end-of-lifed it.
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With the NT kernel they control everything from the ground up, that's just the way they like it. 100% proprietary. MS will switch to a non-MS kernel the same day hell freezes over, along with open-sourcing everything.
"You're just grabbing at straws trying to find things to bitch about regarding Microsoft. Red Hat drops support WAY sooner than Microsoft ever does (it's been 5 years for Windows 98 -- Redhat discontinued support for Redhat 7.3 at the end of last year and that's way newer than Windows 98.)" There are a lot of posts regarding the fact that Linux companies don't support as long as Microsoft, but the thing is, if I want to upgrade to Redhat 9 I can just download an ISO or, worst case, buy the OS for $40. If, on the other hand, I want to upgrade to Windows XP, it's going to cost me over $150, plus a lot more in hardware upgrades.
Give me a fucking break you tool. Just try to get support from Red Hat for RH 5.0. On Slashdot if you criticize your ca. 2000 Linux distro with the 2.2 kernel, you get modded down and told to "get with the program" and stop running such an ancient OS, even though said OS is only the same age as Win 98 and is perhaps even younger. But when Microsoft commits the horrible crime of ALLOWING TIME TO LAPSE, it's like the end of the fucking world. Software gets old and obsolete after a period of time, deal with it. It doesn't matter if the source is available when 99.999% of Win98 users couldn't give half a shit.
I find it to have the best mix of stability, security (with anti-virus and such) and user friendly-ness of most windows OSes. 2000 was primarily server/coprate, ME failed at a basic level. XP is fair, but with an insane number of worms, you doubt microsoft will ever get another winner like 98 in it's day.
SAILING MISHAP
Odd, why not? A decent free firewall like Agnitum Outpost, a decent free antivirus program like AVG, and Firebird as a browser, and away you go.
I get useful work (haha) done on my Libretto running w95, for heaven's sake. 16 Mb of RAM and a P120 processor. Still works fine for most internet stuff that I do.
So Win98 users, the VAST VAST MAJORITY of whom do not have a lick of programming skill not to mention the time or desire to maintain their OS themselves, should enroll in a BS program in computer science at their nearest accredited university, a dramatic rearragement of their priorities, in order to maintain their OS themselves. Or else, they should pay someone else MORE THAN THE COST OF AN UPGRADE TO 2000 OR XP to continually develop patches for their shitty old OS and to provide support for it.
Microsoft "addicted" those users to Windows 98. As if the general public is full of raging drug-addicted idiots too poor and destitute to see after their own welfare. It's a good thing a person like you is around to show them the light, the One True Path! Well, fuck you. You would make more sense if you weren't so busy felching cum out of Dick Stallman's distended rectum.
Such as? I have been running 2k for 3 years now, never crashed or gave me any nuisances. Please back up your claims or do not say them.
Buy a mac, play games on your mac, and dump your Win98 partition. I did and now I'm Microsoft free! A little KOffice, Keynote, and Safari, and I don't have a stitch of MS anywhere now that I've got Warcraft III for the Mac. A commercial operating system with commercial programs, with a BSD core. Happiness is OS-X and FreeBSD interoperability. Now to purge the world of that nasty little penguin and dolphin database and computing will be a place again.
-- Sean Chittenden
I recently built myself a new box,athlon2600,512 of DDR,video card w/tv out,not bleeding edge but up to date.Better than my last 1 gig athlon box.
Which OS did I use? Win98! "Why use THAT?" everyone asked. Because it boots every time,never a BSOD like the 2000Pro that my wife HAS to use because the company sent her home with it."Security Concerns with 98" they said. BS!!
I never run any AV software,I did a online scan for the first time last week,been running 3 years now with 1 "trojan reported",just cain/abel.Now remember, I don't download/install everything that comes down the pike AND I am behind an old 350Mhz box w/ Suse on it,Slackware before that.
But real point is this: I reading about the spoofing of the address bar recently and the OS/IE combo that I'm running wasn't vulnerable to this attack.What else can I say?
Security through Obscurity!!!
Guess there's no money left in 98 anymore.
Too Bad.
Seriously, who would expect MS to fix them?
For any specific bug, there is absolutely no guarantee that Microsoft will ever fix it -- no matter how serious it may be to your organization.
Microsoft fixes bugs only when their internal calculus (i.e. marketing-benefit minus engineering-cost) exceeds a certain threshhold.
There are plenty of severe bugs in Windows that never have, and never will be fixed.
For example, all MS file systems have a serious design defect that makes it impossible to reliably delete or rename a file without rebooting the machine first. (Zombie processes can hold a file open forever, preventing any deleting or renaming.)
20 years of people pleading with MS to fix that bug has had no effect, yet it's a "showstopper" by any reasonable definition.
When it comes to quality, Microsoft is a huge, faceless, bureaucratic brick wall.
There is only one reasonable strategy: If you want to make sure that bugs get fixed in the OS, then make damn sure you have all the source-code for it.
1) I agree there's no reason Microsoft should be obligated to support their OSes forever. Were you guys complaining when they dropped support for WFW3.11? For comparisons sake - as a Powerbook owner, should I be incensed that OS 6 is not maintained by Apple?
2) The comparisons between MS's support lifetime policy and Red Hat's is ludicrous. When Red Hat ends support for a product line, upgrading to the newer comparable version of the product is free. When version 9 support runs out this spring, you can upgrade to Fedora at no cost. Last I looked, MS wasn't donating any variant of XP or 2000.
#DeleteChrome
how about people, like myself, that have hardware that will NOT run anything after Win98? I have a p133 laptop that I use for web, email, etc, that cannot run Win2k
How about it? You're running a 5-year-old operating system on 8-year-old hardware. What do you expect? The pace of software and hardware evolution will not slow down just for you. Sooner or later, you will have to upgrade.
Looks like MS is forcing me to upgrade my hardware too? Not cool.
Not cool? Neither is complaining about lack of support for something produced last century. Suck it up and buy something that'll run a newer operating system. Used laptops are cheap.
People on slashdot whine way too much.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Darn that Micro$oft. They're ending support for a long-discontinued product that plenty of people are still using!
I'm just glad that General Motors still manufactures genuine GM replacement parts for my '85 Chevy. Oh, wait; no, they don't, even though I still occasionally see people driving '85 Chevies around (especially since I live near a college town).
Now please excuse me while I bring my Model T to my local Ford dealership for a tuneup and a shiny new black paint job.
Seriously, no company in any industry will offer eternal support of discontinued products. And while Windows 98 might not seem that old, the computer industry's product lifecycles do move at a substantially faster rate than most others'.
Sure, I'll be running to archive some patches to CD, and so will a lot of other people who are reading this; I do have friends and relatives still on 98. But I still don't fault Microsoft for choosing not to flush their support and development dollars down the toilet. I'd much rather see the significant resources needed to commercially support an old operating system go towards improving current and future versions of Windows. After all, Windows XP SP2 will be much more useful to me than Windows 98 Third Edition would be.
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
Because they just arent "another company" there are friggin monopoly. There are what? millions? of net enabled Win98 machines? So when the next big network exploit comes out that means no internet for me at home (cable modem) and a general slow-down of the entire net. Not to mention trojans, zombies, etc.
There are simply larger consequences when a monopoly does something as compared to a niche product like Red Hat.
The same rules simply do not apply to a monopoly.
I wouldnt care if there were only a few thousand Win98 installations on the net, but that is certainly not the case. MS could be offering Upgrade vouchers and such if they really cared about security and their customers. If the hardware can't run XP that's fine, they can upgrade to 2K.
Some software, that runs on Windows 98, does not run successfully on Windows XP (and especially on Windows 2000). Sure, such software is usually woefully written but, if users rely on it, so what?
Can you name one widely used application that does not work on 2k natively or using the compatibility layer provided on the cdrom?
I don't know about "widely used applications", but I know that several games did *not* work in Windows2000 that worked in Windows98. One example, FIFA99 would work in compatability mode, but without support for gamepads, which wasn't very fun (don't recall if networking even worked). This was a major turn off to their emulation. This doesn't even address the issue of DOS programs some people may want to use (again, many older games like the good Ultimas) and I know a couple companies that, although an oddity, still use WordPerfect for DOS (or did two-three years ago at least, not sure of now to be honest).
To all the idiots that claim that OSS is the one and only way to "keep yourself supported" - consider this: Grandma's not going to learn C and kernel development just to get her webcam working, or to keep her dot matrix printer churning out recipies.
Imagine 2 sets of people - those still running Windows 98, *exclusively*, for day to day work and those who can fully, without-a-doubt understand their favorite OSS and code their way through a new printer driver (or whatever). Now, show me the intersection of those 2 sets. Not a big resultant set is it? Does that set even exist?
There IS no Windows 95/98 "kernel". It's just DOS, which is plenty easy to do yourself given enough time to implement every interrupt on the DOS interrupts list (like the DOS version of POSIX). Windows 95/98 IS just the graphical shell, and when MS created NT/2000/XP they wrote a whole new kernel from scratch. I don't think they're going to swap out the NT kernel any time soon - it is a stable and extensible system.
Correct, they've posted the same thing in the MSDN subscriber downloads site. From what I understand MS has to phase out their JVM by September 30, 2004. After this date they won't even be allowed to issue security patches for the thing.
I certainly don't feel sorry for Microsoft, but I feel really bad for all the ISVs out there that still rely on this JVM. One of our vendors has to do a complete rewrite of their huge app in the next 10 months -- it uses MS J++ on the server and lots of applets on the front end that rely on the WFC (Windows Foundation Classes (shudder)).
There's probably a fair amount of J++ code from the late 90's that nobody even keeps track of anymore. A truly insidious worm developer would write an MSJVM exploit once MS is legally prohibited from issuing a patch.
Your grandparents don't have to do it. Another company or group could come along, take RH's source and run with it and do all the work for your grandparents.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Why do so many corporations still use Windows 98? It's because a copy of Windows 98 costs $180. Compare that to NT 4 which ran about $349. And NT didn't even support IDE! Your IDE drives showed up as SCSI. And drivers had always been an issue with NT.
Worried about security with Windows 98? Use a domain controller and set a group policy. Add the "MustBeValidated" policy and users can't log in without a being validated by a Windows NT domain.
Sure Windows 98 wasn't all that stable, but it was alot cheaper than NT. And if a workstation crashed or become problematic because of Windows, you reimage it. All the data is saved on the server anyway (at least it should be).
As far as upgrading from Windows 98 as a whole, sure hardware has vastly increased. But does that mean you need to have 2 GHz systems? Let's face it, buying a new computer for just Internet use is overkill anymore. Super fast systems aren't needed for things like web browsing an email. Just because you can go faster, doesn't mean you have to. Windows 98 fits the bill. It supports "legacy" hardware and that might be all some people need.
Windows 98 was simple and served the average user's needs.
It's hard to understand why you're letting Microsoft specify January 16 as the day to switch. You should have switched earlier if the need arose. You should switch later if the need arises. Why does Microsoft decide for you?
A Good Intro to NetBS
Why should they do any such thing? They have no obligation to you to make your life easier. They've already provided an upgraded product, WinXP (or whatever their version of the month is at the moment), and you can just buy that. If you're too cheap to constantly upgrade to their latest-and-greatest, then what good are you as a customer?
You talk about MS as if they have some social obligation to the public. They have none; their only obligation is to make themselves obscenely wealthy, at any cost. If you don't like the way they do this, you're free to seek out alternatives.
the diffrence is in that when ms pulls the support you dont get any ability to find aftermarket parts (exchanging it with linux is like takeing that chevy and stuff a new ford engine into it).
in the car world there are allso a market for small companys that are makeing parts that fit the old cars, do the same with windows and you will have microsoft on your back with the dmca or copyright claims...
like someone earlyer said, its like buying a car with a padlocked hood. only the ones with the key can fix things. and if you cut away the padlock then they come yelling with lawyers...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
You'd think that a convicted monopoly would have to follow slightly different rules than other "normal" businesses though.
You'd think, but here in the US corporate profits are more important to the current administration than anything else. So if you're a big monopoly doing illegal stuff to put others out of business and increase your bottom line, the DOJ will happily look away. Of course, a few hefty campaign contributions don't hurt either.
In the auto industry, any body shop can fix your door if it gets dented, and you don't face problems with patent owners preventing you from getting replacement parts.
With windows 95 (and likely 98 now), Microsoft is removing the availability of critical updates (equivalent factory recalls). They then wield the power via copyright law and DMCA to prevent anyone from making them available to people who run win 98, thus forcing a paid upgrade.
I don't care so much that they won't provide patches to any new exploits that are found after 5 years (providing they don't sue any white hats that fix them). I do care if they pull the patches and updates that already exist. It's like if you buy a car that ends up with a recall for the seat belt, you get it fixed, and ten years later when you bring it in for a new muffler, they put back in the original, defective seat belt.
BTW, if cars had as many defects and ran as poorly as windows, people would go back to riding horses. Luckily for them, microsoft fills their software with distracting bells and whistles.
Same with other technologies - e.g. Canon does not release specs of their EOS camera-to-lens protocol to third parties, so the "aftermarket" Sigma lens I use is the result of reverse engineering of this protocol.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
After seeing Blaster wreak havoc, a lot of techno-Luddites are experiencing a warm sense of schadenfreude.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.