Microsoft ends support for Windows 98 | The Coffeehouse

no more support for Windows 98

Any C9ners using Win 98? It is estimated that there are 70 million users using Windows 98 today. I guess time to upgrade to XP or even better wait for Vista when it ships. Smiley

Chadk

70mill? sounds unlikely to me.

If so, people should REALLY upgrade!

dahat

Dare I say it, I am, on an old Digital (remember them?) Pentium 133 that runs seti for me. I would have thrown 2000 on there except it didn't have nearly enough ram and the installer said no.

Xaero_Vincent

If people havent upgraded after this long, it's unlikely that they will now. Windows 98 still works and people will continue to use it on their legacy systems.

Regards,
Vincent

IRenderable

dahat wrote:

Dare I say it, I am, on an old Digital (remember them?) Pentium 133 that runs seti for me. I would have thrown 2000 on there except it didn't have nearly enough ram and the installer said no.

Well if you can run Xp on it I am sure you can run 2000.
http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm

IRenderable

ElucidWeb

Its about time, they should have dropped support back in 2004, the operating system is 8 years old so its a step in the right direction. The people that dont upgrade are usually people that got Windows 98 with the computer and have no idea how to upgrade! So usually for them it would require a call to some worthless service like Geek Squad where they are not only charged for the software but an insane amount of money on forced upgrades and service fees.

That is not an experience most would like to endure. I have noticed alot of web sites mentioning Linux as an alternative, last I checked Geek Squad nor any computer service I know of supports Linux. Also if the user cant install software what makes you think they can comprehend an operating system install?

Its interesting, they will probably just keep using it unaware they got updates to begin with until it completely stops working.

jsampsonPC

I don't see why people worry about things like this. How often do we really callup Microsoft and ask them how to use our OS? Smiley

Today, we are the Google-empowered Community, we don't need no stinkin' support!

Of course, anybody still using 98 probably needs more support than Microsoft was willing to offer in the first place.

Sven Groot

jsampsonPC wrote:

I don't see why people worry about things like this. How often do we really callup Microsoft and ask them how to use our OS?

That's not all it means. Ending support also means MS won't be releasing any new security updates for Win98 anymore.

jsampsonPC

Sven Groot wrote:

jsampsonPC wrote:I don't see why people worry about things like this. How often do we really callup Microsoft and ask them how to use our OS?

That's not all it means. Ending support also means MS won't be releasing any new security updates for Win98 anymore.

Good point; can't expect them to keep shaving the rough edges off of everybody's wooden wheels...time to get up to date Smiley

Xaero_Vincent

XP on a 7 MHz / 20 MB RAM system... thats insane!

30 Minute booting time too... Tongue Out

Regards,
Vincent

Shark_M

but did MS iron out all the major exploits in that OS? Or they ended support because it was as secure as they can make it.

XP itself has support for Win 98. you can run apps that run as Win 98. How does this affect xp?

UnoriginalGuy

Windows 98 SE is an extremely fast OS that will be missed. I think Microsoft should have ended support for that thing they call Windows ME ... 98 was always a far superior OS over ME anyway.

rjdohnert

^{Here are my thoughts on it. Enjoy}

jsampsonPC

rjdohnert wrote:

^{Here are my thoughts on it. Enjoy}

Weird, I went to read your blog...and your comments form already knew my info - yet I don't remember posting anything at your site in the past Smiley

Devil blog!

Shining Arcanine

UnoriginalGuy wrote:

Windows 98 SE is an extremely fast OS that will be missed. I think Microsoft should have ended support for that thing they call Windows ME ... 98 was always a far superior OS over ME anyway.

I remember how things were back in 1998 and 1999 and I recall that Windows 98 was bloatware, that Windows 95 was extremely fast and that swapping out the Windows 98 shell for the Windows 95 shell would improve speed.

Recalling the Windows 98 days, Windows 98 would BSOD every few hours and it had this thing known as GUI resources, where if people exceeded a certain amount of kilobytes of them, Windows would crash due to a "lack of memory."

From what I am reading, Microsoft has also ended support for Windows ME:

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=34023

I wonder if Microsoft will consider open sourcing Windows 9x so that people that run Windows 9x operating systems could still get patches. They could come up with their own open source license where they are granted full unrestricted rights to reuse any code that is contributed to the project in any way they see fit so any code that could improve Windows NT could be used by Microsoft in its products. Since Microsoft's current products are far superior to Windows 9x, open sourcing Windows 9x would not give Microsoft any competition but it would give Linux plenty of it, such that it would divide the open source community, slowing down Linux development and enabling Microsoft to claim more of the market while being good for Microsoft's public relations. Just a thought.

cheong

Chadk wrote:

70mill? sounds unlikely to me.

If so, people should REALLY upgrade!

I still have my notebook running Win98 as it doesn't have enough processing power to run WinXP.

Afterall, Win98 /w Office 97 is good enough for me to prepare PowerPoints and normal documents on travel already.

When I brought the notebook, they also offered an upgrade to Win2k Std./Pro. but I didn't because the IrDA dirver didn't and won't work on Win2k systems.

Xaero_Vincent

Shining Arcanine wrote:

I remember how things were back in 1998 and 1999 and I recall that Windows 98 was bloatware, that Windows 95 was extremely fast and that swapping out the Windows 98 shell for the Windows 95 shell would improve speed.

Recalling the Windows 98 days, Windows 98 would BSOD every few hours and it had this thing known as GUI resources, where if people exceeded a certain amount of kilobytes of them, Windows would crash due to a "lack of memory."

From what I am reading, Microsoft has also ended support for Windows ME:

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=34023

I wonder if Microsoft will consider open sourcing Windows 9x so that people that run Windows 9x operating systems could still get patches. They could come up with their own open source license where they are granted full unrestricted rights to reuse any code that is contributed to the project in any way they see fit so any code that could improve Windows NT could be used by Microsoft in its products. Since Microsoft's current products are far superior to Windows 9x, open sourcing Windows 9x would not give Microsoft any competition but it would give Linux plenty of it, such that it would divide the open source community, slowing down Linux development and enabling Microsoft to claim more of the market while being good for Microsoft's public relations. Just a thought.

Nobody would be interested in an open-sourced Windows 9x under a non-GPL compatable license when there is ReactOS that is a clone of modern Windows NT (XP compatable), licensed under GPL, and more stable than 9x or ME ever was.

http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/index.html

Regards,
Vincent

Cornelius Ellsonpeter

Shark_M wrote:

Any C9ners using Win 98? It is estimated that there are 70 million users using Windows 98 today. I guess time to upgrade to XP or even better wait for Vista when it ships.

I have a laptop with 98SE on it but there is no way it could handle XP. I don't take it on the internet, though, and it works just fine. There are tons of things you can do on it...I think people sometimes have a short memory when it comes to how things used to work okay on an older system...I never tried ME though. They tell me I'm not missing anything...but I recall seeing an ME box in a store not that long ago.

HumanCompiler

Sven Groot wrote:

jsampsonPC wrote: I don't see why people worry about things like this. How often do we really callup Microsoft and ask them how to use our OS?

That's not all it means. Ending support also means MS won't be releasing any new security updates for Win98 anymore.

Smells of "incentive" to upgrade to me, but I doubt people on Win98 care that much about "security" anyway, right? Tongue Out

This same "freak out" happened with the end of VB6 support too. If you really want to use the old stuff, knock yourself out. It's all about business and resources. At some point it just doesn't make sense to continue support. It still works without the support. Wink

Btw, definitely a big Win98 and VB6 fan. I spent a few years of my life on those. But not missed!

RNewman

dahat wrote:

Dare I say it, I am, on an old Digital (remember them?) Pentium 133 that runs seti for me. I would have thrown 2000 on there except it didn't have nearly enough ram and the installer said no.

I've got one of those!! Fantastic little machine. It's a Venturis 575 - Pentium 75Mhz, I think. Although I've put a 166 in it.
People tell me it's still not good enough to run Half-Life 2 though Sad

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC's would put XP on these, but sadly its only available for Software Assurance customers.

Angus

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

XP on a 7 MHz / 20 MB RAM system... thats insane!

30 Minute booting time too...

Regards,
Vincent

I saw that, didn't the guys who did that say how they saw each different colour on the 'Welcome Screen' load?

It would be cool to see that, but I would much rather run Windows 98 on such a machine. Tongue Out

Angus Higgins

BryanF

How far along exactly is ReactOS? I remember first coming across their website years ago when I was in high school, and it seems they're currently at version 0.3.0, which seems rather modest. How much success have people had using it as an NT alternative in the real world?

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