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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!
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
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?
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)
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
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.
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)
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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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
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?
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.
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.
You'd think that a convicted monopoly would have to follow slightly different rules than other "normal" businesses though.
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.