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)."

Comments

This is pretty much a dupe anyway

[Overly Critical Guy]

Haven't we had at least two other articles by now on Microsoft phasing out their previous products? How many times can we re-discuss this AGAIN?

Do yourself a favour

[gilesjuk]

Get XP or Win2k, they're a lot more stable than Windows 98. You can properly kill off tasks with no fuss and they come with NTFS which is a much more rugged filesystem than FAT32.

I moved to Windows 2000 as soon as I possibly could back in the days when I ran Windows as my desktop. Windows 98 was a nightmare once you had a config problem.

good ridence

[glenebob]

Win98 was the worst piece of crap excuse for an OS there ever was, with the possible exception of Win95. It's worse than <= Win3.1 and <= MacOS 9.* because it tried to masquerade as a real OS, with the lamest excuse for preemtive multi-tasking and memory protection ever conceived.

Now if they could only find a way to permanently remove every single copy in existence and delete all copies of the source code, the world would be a much better place.

I feel better :-)

I want the 'Big Patch'

[MarcQuadra]

Seriously, when MS discontinues a product it should roll up all the updates, fixes, and upgrades to core components into one massive patch and put it out. It would save me a lot of trouble if I could just install IE6sp1, WinMedia 9, DirectX9, and all the patches all at once rather then go through a dozen reboots. It would also rock the house if you could 'slipstream' the patch into the .CAB files BEFORE installation. It would just be a good policy.