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The world shudders as Win98 gets support reprieve

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  • The world shudders as Win98 gets support reprieve

    Microsoft has issued a stay of execution for Windows 98, 98 SE and Windows ME, extending support for the geriatric trio until the end of June 2006, and tidying up their status a little, while it's about it. Win98 and SE were scheduled to take the drop this Friday, while ME was due to be around to depress us until the end of the year, with End of Life (defined as one year after an OS enters "non-supported phase" a year after that.

    The change means that customers using the operating systems will still be able to get paid for telephone support, and that Microsoft won't wash its hands entirely when it comes to security issues. Since it got the Trustworthy Computing bug the company has floated the possibility of a cull of the older products being the price of security, but it would appear this won't play with all the customers. Microsoft has also been coming under increasing pressure from open source in emerging and cash-strapped markets, so there's probably some defensive sense in it letting the 98 family run for a little while longer.


  • #2
    Perhaps they should open source winblows 98. A lot of people are still using and using on machines that will only chug with Win2k or XP.
    Chief Lemon Buyer no more Linux sucks but not as much
    Weather nut and sad git.

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    • #3
      I'd still be using Win98 if it wasn't for HW vendors slowly reducing driver support for it. The main things I'd want MS to fix is various Explorer bugs that were introduced with IE6 that cause severe slow downs occasionally, including a freeze up when deleting large numbers of files.

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      • #4
        Doubt if you see that fixed. Yeh the driver devolpment or lack of it. Do you know I've got a steering wheel that doesn't work under XP and Seitek still haven't debugged the driver in over an year. It worked once then suddenly stopped. Works fine on another machine and if I mix and match drivers I can get it to work minus force feedback and buttons.
        Chief Lemon Buyer no more Linux sucks but not as much
        Weather nut and sad git.

        My Weather Page

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        • #5
          Maybe if MS reduced the cost of their OSes more people would be inclined to upgrade
          When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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          • #6
            Thats why you work for a company that allows you have it at home for free.
            Chief Lemon Buyer no more Linux sucks but not as much
            Weather nut and sad git.

            My Weather Page

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
              I'd still be using Win98 if it wasn't for HW vendors slowly reducing driver support for it. The main things I'd want MS to fix is various Explorer bugs that were introduced with IE6 that cause severe slow downs occasionally, including a freeze up when deleting large numbers of files.
              I guess I am not the only one! At least now I know I am not crazy.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by High_Jumbllama
                I guess I am not the only one! At least now I know I am not crazy.
                Nup, sorry, can't say I agree

                After working for years with Win95 and Win98, the sooner it dies, the happier I will be. Win98 simply doesn't have the availibility or the performance that I need.

                Yes, you are crazy, but no, I will not condemn you ... there is no rule that says everyone must like the same things
                80% of people think I should be in a Mental Institute

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                • #9
                  Why would any of you keep using Win98?

                  It was utter shit. Complete, utter, and total shit.

                  I'd rather be forced to use WinME than 98.

                  - Gurm
                  The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

                  I'm the least you could do
                  If only life were as easy as you
                  I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
                  If only life were as easy as you
                  I would still get screwed

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                  • #10
                    Nah, 98SE is definitely better than ME. Also, a lot of people don't need anything more than 98, and/or can't afford the upgrade.

                    And around here, a lot of people I know in the industry need a 9x OS, there's no good way in NT to program through drivers to the hardware level.
                    Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Wombat
                      Nah, 98SE is definitely better than ME. Also, a lot of people don't need anything more than 98, and/or can't afford the upgrade.

                      And around here, a lot of people I know in the industry need a 9x OS, there's no good way in NT to program through drivers to the hardware level.
                      Couldn't you just write a generic driver that allows user space programs to talk through the driver layer to the hardware.

                      The generic driver will just grab the required io and memory areas, then the user space program can talk to the io ports indirectly using this driver.

                      This is just an idea though, it may not work since latency may be a problem. Though, if the user-space program is set to real-time priority, latency shouldn't be a big problem.
                      80% of people think I should be in a Mental Institute

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                      • #12
                        They need to have direct access. Also, it's my understanding that the best a user can get in NT is an abstraction interface to the hardware. That just won't do. Not if you're designing hard drives or PCI devices at least.
                        Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                        • #13
                          I still have Win98 on my other drive. I only boot into it to play Half-Life and use my Marvel G200. Although if I worked at it I could probably get HL to work under wine and there are new Marvel drivers for 2.6 kernel being developed. Then I won't use Win98 anymore.
                          Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
                          Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

                          "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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                          • #14
                            Speaking of which TnT, I wonder how many people, now that Win9x support is getting dropped, will actually switch to Linux? I don't think that many, since anyone who actually USES the support, wouldn't install linux in the first place. Unless of course it's like "Grandma, that computer is no longer supported by Microsoft, so I'm going to install linux on your computer, I'll just do support for it."

                            I will completely agree with Wombat that Win98SE was WAY better than WinME. Mainly because all I ever did with Win9x OS's is play video games, and with WinME, that took away the ability to play any old dos games. Now of course we have emulators

                            Leech
                            Wah! Wah!

                            In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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                            • #15
                              You don't NEED Win9x to program device drivers. People have been doing it successfully on NT platforms for nearly 10 years.

                              - Gurm
                              The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

                              I'm the least you could do
                              If only life were as easy as you
                              I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
                              If only life were as easy as you
                              I would still get screwed

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