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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)."
... compared to the other major player in the consumer OS market, Apple, how good is Microsoft's support for older operating systems?
To open up the source for Win95/98/Me so the community can step in where M$ left off.
I use Windows98 on one server and DOS/3.11 on another. Whats scary is that they're very stable. ^.^
Well, my parents run Windows 98. My grandfather runs Windows 98. My other grandfather runs Windows 98SE. I have no intention of upgrading their computers now or ever.
I've long since put my trust in anti-viral software and AdAware. That's working far better for me than many of Microsoft's patches have. I still have IE trying to download stuff on my Windows Server 2003 laptop all the time, but thankfully VirusScan always catches it and AdAware makes a nice backup should VisusScan fail. If my fully up-to-date Windows Server 2003 machine fails, why should I even bother trying to lock-down or upgrade a windows 98 machine?
Microsoft isn't supporting me, so I'm not going to go out of my way to get any of my relatives to support them. In fact, I'm recommending they all get Apple laptops next time they want to do a major computer upgrade.
Bryan
My organization is on a 3-year desktop replacement cycle. Just this week, we fished the last five Windows 98 machines out of our pool and are now at XP across the board.
Yeah - I considered Linux, but then I considered retraining costs, application problems and general user resistance and decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting at this point. (not that I WOULDN'T like to get MS out eventually).
If it wasn't for the regular security threats that need patching these days, Win98 could go on for a long time.
Software gets old and the best thing to do is officially put it to rest. If you want to continue to use it that's your choice. Just means you also don't plan to update your hardware.
IMO supporting old versions of software is a waste of energy. I'd rather see that energy put to drivers and updates for new systems. Things need to progress forward. WHen I got into Linux the community would brag that it would still run on 8086 or 286. That's over for mainstream Linux. Hardware moved forward and so did Linux.
Wait......this...is a joke....right? *snicker*, *guffaw!*.
"Laugh all you want, Monkey Boy." - John Whorfin
I, for one, still play X-Wing and TIE Fighter (and a few other games unplayable/unsupported in NT/2000/XP). Why, what do you use your Microsoft OSes for?
Carthago delenda est!
Have you considered that he might be talking about supporting student's machine and not administrative systems? Often times, IT staff at colleges end up supporting whatever the students happen to bring with them.
That's why I'm using it.
The fastest way to run Windows programs under Linux is with Win4lin.
Win4lin doesn't support W2K, so I use Win98 for it.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
And how am I supposed to play games on my PII box? UT, max payne, and even more receng games are playable under win98, but when I boot to XP (I've got enough ram), those games are unplayable.
I don't know if this is still true but I always found Windows 98 faster then Win2K and WinXP for games... It's probably because theres much less overhead. Does this mean no more DirectX support for Windows98?
Hmm..
Quite a few people still use Windows 98. I wonder if someone could make some money by doing third-party support of Windows98.
It would be a bit hard to roll out patches as a third-party, but if you supplied people with some sort of firewall package (to shield users from security holes that can't be patched otherwise) and migrated MSIE/Outlook Express users over to Mozilla, it seems like something that could be done.
Windows Media Player users could also be migrated to Winamp.. Pretty much anything that wouldn't be Microsoft supported could be replaced with still-developed Open Source alternatives.
It seems like businesses who don't have their own IT department and run a lot of Win98 PCs who have no other need to upgrade could benefit from this.
yeah, my grandparents will be recompiling their Red Hat 6 kernel on their own from now! sheesh...
Open Source or not, you have no argument.
-my other sig is your mom
This is no longer the case. Instead hardware designers will be required to get bogged down in driver developement, just to get the first few bits into and out of their systems. In my limited experience with MS Windows driver development, DDK information is 'restricted' and 'quick and dirty' tests are no longer possible.
It looks like I will be learning how to write a linux device driver (or reverting to a DOS replacement).
I believe that 98 is still the most used OS, that the 27%-35% that it has exceeds that of any of the other variants. If not, it's close. It's odd for a product to become a non-entity when it's at the top of the heap.
For example, if you develop software for home or school use, you are cutting your throat if it won't run on 98, but MS won't help you keep a 98 machine to test that it works for those 50 million potential users. Yecch!
Support yourself? Sounds like lack of support to me... sounds like you are trying to justify Red Hat's position by saying that open source is The Answer.
But what's with the lack of driver support? Sounds like it's 50/50 wherever you go. But I'm the idiot, you know, wanting my webcam and scanner to work with my OS.
evil adrian
and worse than that, win98 is vulnerable to a number of trojans that will turn their machines into more spam relays. Do we really want more spam mail? Microsoft obviously does, else they would continue to at least make the current patches available. Face it, Microsoft doesn't care about anything but your money. So hand it over right now, damnit!
> why should they start now?
Because another worm outbreak would be very very very bad for PR and future sales.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
From the Article:
Extended Support: June 30, 2002 - January 16, 2004 (Extended hotfix support ends June 30, 2003. After January 16, 2004, this product will be obsolete and assisted support will no longer be available from Microsoft. Online self-help support will continue to be available until at least June 30, 2006.)
Does "online self-help support" include security fixes? Who knows, there's certainly no useful contextual information.
Fire up VMWare or Bochs, install Windows 98 with everything on it. Download and install all the patches. Copy that VM--you now have a fully (to date) patched master copy. If you're feeling really ambitious, grab all the updates from the Corporate Windows Update site (which naturally requires IE) and burn a CD or two of them.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
I the unfortunate person in the family that has to fix friends/familys computers, and 90% of them still use 98. How would one go about saving all the win98 updates? Can it bee done if i don't have a machine running 98?
Hey, January 16 is my birthday. Way to go Bill. Thanks for a great pressie.
Does this mean that new peripherals such as printers will not be compatible with Windows 98? I guess those that write printer drivers or suchlike need help from MS, or at least need the option to get help from MS.
Very sad.
Schnapple
Okay, well I've got several kids games (for the kids) and one or two older strategy games that just won't work on Win2K - anyone know if the W98 emulation setting on WinXPHome shortcuts works with old, "dirty" (peek and poke, is my guess) code?
When I install windows 98, and get MSIE 4, I have the upgrade burned to CD, for MSIE 6, and that takes about 10 minutes to install. Trick is, don't set up an internet connection until you do the upgrade, or the upgrade installer will try and phone home. (hundreds of times, if you let it.). I also have Netscape 4.79, and MozillaFirebird, Eudora, and Pegasus, to round out the installation of Windows 98. I always have Linux, usually Redhat, or perhaps SuSE, or Debian, and Mandrake on the box also. I use a menu to select the OS on bootup, and if already in Windows 98, I have Icons on the desktop to run linux.bat/loadlin for the distro I want.
Windows 98 closes, and my Linux boots up.
I can just use the original Windows 98 for that, without any upgrades, but I like to compare the Linux distro's to Windows 98 on the same box. Windows 98 does a fair job, still. I always run a firewall on it to be safe if going online. For Linux, I like Firestarter firewall.
Windows 98 has largely been ignored by the virus writers for the past two years. The superworms this year that took down my school districts entire network of w2k machines didnt harm the windows 98 machines at all.
That's been done many times in the past. Will MS no longer offer patches if a new, powerful exploit finds its way around?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
So lets here it from someone on the inside. What kind of party is being planned in the tech support offices now that you can put the beast to bed?
So far no one has mentioned Microsoft's official excuse for terminating Windows 98--the termination was included as part of their settlement of a lawsuit with Sun. This is actually an excellent example of Microsoft's diabolical cleverness. They basically lost the lawsuit, but they used the settlement to kill off 98 so they can make more money on that XP garbage. You call that "punishment"? Hard to believe that Sun's lawyers were dumb enough to fall for that:
Brer Rabbit Microsoft: "Whatever you do, Brer Fox Sun, please don't throw me in that briar patch of dropping Windows 98 support!"
Anyway, my own timing is almost impeccable, which isn't so common. I hope it's a good sign for the new year. My last pure Windows 98 box apparently croaked last night (and all the data had been pulled off a while ago). I still have a couple of cross-booters just in case.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Sure, it sucks supporting old software, but when January 16 rolls around, the two Microsoft 98 machines I own will switch to one Microsoft XP machine and one Debian GNU/Linux machine.
For my personal use, I'm not willing to pay for updates when F/OSS software does what I need. The only reason why I'm even upgrading one machine to XP is that I'm not the primary user.
I'll morally justify "pirating" music.
It's not sheet music, it's a performance. If they want paid again, then perform it again. This works best with an audience. CD's & MP3's are promotional materials to be distributed FREE like Dominoes Pizza flyers. They're a demo of the artist at work.
Of course it was the recording industry that pushed the idea that the recording was the work of art. Nonsense, the recording is a recording of the performance, which is the work of art, not the work itself. The composer gets to call the music his/her art and gets to charge for copies of the sheet music. The performer only has a right to charge for performances.
That's why they call them performing arts. You don't see a Master Chef trying to sell clones of his masterpiece meals, no he has to cook them over and over again in order to sell them over and over again. But hey, if he also wrote the recipe (just like writing sheet music) then he can sell printed copies of that no problem. But if the chef wants to make money cooking, he has to cook. If a musical performer wants to make money performing music, then they had better perform it, 3 times a week for as long as people will see it.
I do not believe taking written music, performing it once, and then sitting back making millions selling copies should be legal. If they want to make music selling copies then they need to produce a form of art that is able to be copied with 100% accuracy, like sheet music. A musical performance should not be copyrightable any more than the act of a high school marching band performing John Phillip Sousa.
This is not the same for movies. The movie IS the work of art. A movie is not a recording of a play performed on stage. Same with photographs. The photograph is the work of art. I can't take someone else's photograph and do my rendition of it. I can't take somebody else's movie and do my rendition of it, no we would both be doing our own rendition of the same script, the script being the sheet music.
Again, the perfromance is the work of art and you can't copy a performance, you can only record it. A recording is not a copy. The acoustics aren't the same, you can't see the look in the performers eyes, you can't hear everything just as the band played it (ask any audiophile), so it's not a copy.
Stop granting copyrights to things that can't be copied.
Off I go to copyright the act of me making steak and shrimp while juggling all the utensils in the air.
Sigh...
If Microsoft is "forcing" them to upgrade to something more stable and secure, then what is the problem? If the problem is really as big as you say it is, we should all be happy.
As for Red Hat, sure, upgrade for free, if you know what you're doing. I don't know what the percentage is, but I would venture that roughly MOST of the people using computers wouldn't know what to do with Linux -- how to configure it, how to upgrade it, how to get their webcam to work with it. So while everyone is bitching about "forcing" Windows users to upgrade, why aren't they bitching about Linux developers "forcing" users to work with needlessly arcane interface to extend and upgrade, a shitty GUI, and no driver support?
Oh, wait, because "Micro$oft" is "evil" for trying to make money. My bad.
I don't want to make peace with people that are stupid. I'd rather point out their stupidity in a fashion that makes them stop posting, or makes them post more intelligently. I'm sick of making "nice" posts and then getting flamed by a bunch of 14 year olds that think it's their inalienable right to violate other people's rights.
evil adrian
First MS violated the contract that they made with Sun. Now MS is screwing its own customers rather than pay the costs of obeying the law. But you think we should blame Sun for expecting MS to abide by the contract that MS signed? And you think that we should blame the courts for enforcing the contract that MS signed?
I supose you think that the high cost of opperating prisons should be blamed on the people who report crime, and the courts who send criminals to prison?
I still have an old computer running a PII 233MhZ, 4GB hard drive dual-booting on Mandrake Linux and Windows 98. What OS do you think I'll be more inclined to use when M$ drops support on W98? I bought the Mandrake 7.0 distro at Best Buy for twenty bucks, so it included support and I STILL GET support. (I bought it a few years ago when I had dialup and it made no sense to download it). When Windows 98 would have come at the hefty price of $100, and they drop support now? Maybe not all of us want to upgrade to XP, or can't because we have old PCs lying around that need updates. Microsoft isn't REQUIRING the upgrades, but they're doing a damned nice job of forcing them on us.
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What will happen is that according to most of the consumer protection laws around the world, Microsoft must recall their defective win 98 software and issue new CDs that don't install the insecure software by default. They may be able to get away with just selling a $5 "reinstall CD" at computer shops.
Would you buy a car with an onboard computer in it that no one but a highly trained mechanic certified by the car's manufacturer could fix?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I'm unhappy about this because I like my win '98 box because it runs the software I need (Photoshop, games, dreamweaver) and unlike XP, it doesn't have product activation.
I can't really bitch too much at Microsoft, because 5+ years active support is much better than any commercial Linux distro.
If Linux could run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Europa Universalis II, this would prompt me to switch.
evanchik.net
Ah great, so it runs all the games I play under Windows? No? Ok, get back to me when it does.
It would have been nice to see the DOJ force MS to release the source of OS's that MS decided to discontinue support.. Atleast the parts of code that weren't carried over to their next OS release to force MS to come up with actual innovation and give everyone an idea of how much code is reused from OS to OS release.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Commercial products should become public domain once they are no longer sold nor officially supported.
There seems to be a lot of discussion in here about upgrading from Windows 98SE to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux, etc. etc. without taking into account the simple fact that most people on /. are probably in the IT industry anyway and have free and easy access to MSDN CDs that allow them to install and use the latest Windows OS and Office at home, free of charge.
The arguments on here follow the same arguments I frequently have with colleagues at work and friends at home when we discuss moving to Linux as an option of getting out of the Windows upgrade cycle (I'm the Linux user, the others all use Windows as their main OS) - they're all happy to stay in the Windows upgrade cycle until you remind them that if they didn't have access to MSDN CDs, they would end up parting with several hundred dollars to run the Microsoft software that they currently run - when you remind them of that, Linux (to them) then seems to be something worth considering...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
And it's customers like you that lower the bar for corporate responsibility. Sure, no company is OBLIGATED to do it's customers well, but what I'm asking for is mostly in the name of housekeeping and general goodness. I try very hard to avoid companies that don't act in 'good faith' with their customers, it's a whole big market out there and I'd rather have a kinder, gentler vendor relationship than one where I get bent over and reamed.
Sure, sometimes it's unavoidable, like MS, there's no way my employer can ween some of the departments off their WinDell boxen, but Apple treats us more like 'family' than Dell, and it's very important to me that I have that sort of relationship with my vendors.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You can cut down win98 a heck of a lot:
:)
I can't see a way to do this quite so well with WinNT/2k/XP without buying an Xbox
It's useful because you can double-boot with your linux and keep Win98 cut down just for games or whatever.
A blog I run for the wealth
Finally, Windows 98SE upgraded and patched users can rest easy. Since Microsoft won't support it anymore, it will no longer be the target of malicious hackers. Another plus is an opportunity for a company to offer third party support.