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Microsoft Extends Win98/SE Support
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet reports that Microsoft is extending technical support for Windows 98 till 30 June 2006, despite being days away from switching support to a CD. It seems Windows 98 will also have all necessary security updates till the new expiry date." The article states that Microsoft will have "...During that time paid over-the-phone support will be available, and "critical" security issues will be reviewed and "appropriate steps" taken."
Corporate usage of this OS is still widespread, mainly due to inertia more than anything else. Microsoft is desperately trying to get companies to switch, but getting Officer Level peeps to understand the inherent benefits is proving to be... difficult...
I find that all the time I've used Windows (since 3.1), I've never had to call tech support, and most users would be fine without ever calling. Most users will just stay with the older, outdated systems then upgrade, so Microsoft can get even more money from the few people that do call in with Windows 98 issues as last I checked they still made you pay by the minute. It doesn't require as much effort to patch an issue in 98, and the amount of money from tech support that you could rake in from keeping it supported could be a very considerable amount.
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Other than that, no reason.
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This may have been a nice thing to do, but it's a bad business move IMHO. Companies still using Windows 98 have been shown that if they're stubborn enough, they'll get their way. Not only did Microsoft lose out on the Windows 2000/XP licenses they would've bought, they have to continue to pay to patch up the old workhorse.
A similar thing happened with NT 4, although Microsoft didn't give in. I think they'll have a hell of a time when it comes time to EOL Windows 2000.
Continued security updates for ... 8 years? You will be lucky get 8 months from Fedora. Somebody please point me to a Linux distribution that offers that duration of support at any price. Wow.
This is an extremely good thing for people who use Microsoft products, both in terms of what it will do now, and in terms of what it seems to hint at regarding how Microsoft will support its discontinued products.
This means it's a horrible thing for the rest of us, because it will slow the rate at which people are becoming disillusioned and ultimately fed up with Microsoft. I had always thought that Microsoft's stringent policy of bullying and abandoning anyone who won't go along with their periodic forced upgrades is the best gift MS's competitors could have possibly recieved; now the chance to take advantage of that gift is to a certain extent gone.
After all, it's hard to give people reasons to switch away from something they're used to, and hard to convince people to switch away from something they're used to. It's just so much easier when Microsoft creates the reasons and does the convincing for us. If they stopped doing that, we'd have to win on the actual merits of our products, and we don't want that, do we? This is a black day indeed.
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If a new vulnerability were to surface, and MS refuses to provide an update for the millions of Win98 users, and this causes a lot of trouble for them, it just looks bad for MS. Fair or not, given the way they are portrayed, saying, "hey, we told you, we aren't supporting that anymore" isn't going to stick. It's going to be another case of how Microsoft is responsible for another security problem.
Perhaps they're extending it to 2k6 because of Longhorn? I mean, it makes sense. Just before they released XP they stopped support of 95. They probably want to wait for Longhorn before they drop support of 98. I can't see any other reason they'd support an OS for so long. (Let's ignore the fact that perhaps they should support all of their OS's regardless. Though that'd be some task.)
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I can't believe we didn't hear this news sooner, Win98 is by far the largest userbase of all the MS systems, especially at home/school. Looks like they finally realised that they cant force things onto people... yet
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
2) The system runs fairly stable (not quite as stable as XP, but I crash maybe 1x per week).
Note how Windows has changed our way of looking at computer systems & technology in general - something that only breaks down about once a week is considered fairly stable. Makes me shiver...
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
MS may "support" their customers in the sense that they still provide security updates, but they sure don't give free tech support.
Oh but they do. Kind of. The KB and MSDN articles are available for free. There are also many MVPs (and many more non-MVPs who just want to help people out) who respond to questions in the microsoft.public.* newsgroup hierarchy. Technically that's not MS support but many MS employees, some more knowledgeable than any support hotline rep could ever be, also frequent these forums.
If the Linux "community" counts as support then so does the Microsoft "community". You don't necessarily need open source to take advantage of a large community of users sharing their knowledge.
The problem for Microsoft is that Average Joe home users, by and large, do not upgrade their OS.
If you think back a few years to when the public were really starting to get turned on to the Internet - this would be the time of Win98 or its SE sequel.
It was also at this time that PCs started to reach the speed and capacity that gave most people what they would want for ever more - Web, Email, Word etc.
Quite a few of my friends and family bought computers for the first time around this period and not a single one of them is even thinking about upgrading. It's just not something that comes into their heads. They switch their computers on, check email, write a letter, book a ticket etc. and then switch them off again.
Ergo, the home user market for Win98/SE is huge and will probably remain so for a long time to come.
they have a machine that cannot be upgraded to run Windows 2000 or XP. If they want to run 2000 or XP, they need to buy a brand new machine.
Ironically I still know people running Windows 3.X or Windows 95 or even DOS. They cannot afford to upgrade to a newer machine or newer software. They could; however, run Linux or *BSD Unix on their systems if they knew how. Not as fast as modern machines, but enough to limp along.
New machines can cost like $500USD to $600USD, and then they have to buy the modern software to run on them, as they cannot use the older software as the EULA usually does not allow them to switch it from one machine to another. Plus it may not run on the newer machine or use all the features.
An alternative is to head to Wal-Mart or some other place that sells a $400USD Lindows machine and use OpenOffice.Org etc. Then they need to be retrained for the new OS and software. Then use OSS software for everything else. This of course would require the assistance of someone like a Slashdotter who is Linux savvy and can train them.
Another alternative is to buy a used machine with 2000 or XP on it, or 2000/XP ready. Still the softare will need to be upgraded. The hardware costs will be less than the new machine.
Yet another alternative is if they have an ATX case, to just get a new ATX motherboard, CPU, Memory, and ATX power supply. Get an all-in-one motherboard with built in Video, Audio, LAN, Modem, etc. Like an NForce2 chipset motherboard. Still need to buy 2000/XP and the software upgrades. The hardware cost will be lower than a new machine, and may be lower than an used machine.
No matter what the option, the 98 user may have to buy new hardware to migrate to 2000/XP.
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For the same reason that people live in 100-year-old houses, use 20-year-old toasters, and ten-year-old refrigerators.
Because they continue to do the job that they were originally purchased for. Yes, they are not without problems, but when the problems are minor (or are just plain annoying) it is difficult for your average consumer to justify spending $500+ on a new computer.. not to mention the inconvenience of having to move everything from the old machine to the new one.
Heck, I'll even admit that I have an old Win98SE box sitting around here. Never got around to updating it to Win2k. It gets about 10 hours a month of use, so it hasn't been a high priority.
If M$ had actually written decent code, encouraging bug-free and secure design (ie firing anyone responsible for a buffer overflow bug), Joe sixpack-type people would have no reason to upgrade to 2k or XP.
So why do SuSE/Mandrake/RedHat/et. al. keep coming out with new versions of their products, then? Oh, silly me, I forgot -- you want to have it both ways. MS bringing out new versions = proof of terrible code. Linux vendors doing exactly the same thing = proof they listen to the customer.
The fact is, that is it is not of merchantable quality, or fit for the intended purpose, it has to be repaired, replaced (with what? XP will not run on most hardware that runs 98), or the purchase price refunded.
In the UK, a court case established that software is in fact goods. If someone has stitched them up with threats of a class action, which would result in them replacing or refunding every single copy of 98, all I can say is well done.
If it happened as a result of legal pressure somewhere else, again well done. The sad thing is that we may never know why, I sense the outcome of some out of court settlement with someone, somewhere, lying behind this.
Polite request to Bill: Can I please have my money back for the copy of ME which I purchased to try to get a bug fix for 98, but which in fact never worked properly? Or, do I have to take you to the UK Small Claims Court?