Win98, ME gone by summer?

JJKizak wrote on 5/12/2005, 9:00 AM

My guru buddy just told me Microsoft will really try to put the Win98 and ME os's to death by summer. Also the newer versions of Win2K Pro will let you still be able to put one version on multiple computers but that they will not network with each other.

JJK

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/12/2005, 10:34 AM

Interesting. I had a long telephone chat with someone from Microsoft's product development department about two months ago. He was surveying random IT managers about their OS usage. I told him that our shop is still about 60% 98SE and only 30% XP. He said that seemed to be pretty close to the national average for business IT installations, and based on that they would probably be continuing 98SE support for another couple of years.

In technical installations and home users though XP definately has the majority share.

bakerja wrote on 5/12/2005, 1:33 PM

As long as they do not cripple existing Win ME systems. I have an old Korg OASYS PCI card that will not run on 2k or XP and I am not ready to give it up! I have an old 450mhz machine with ME dedicated to the OASYS and it just keeps on keeping on...

JAB

B.Verlik wrote on 5/12/2005, 3:03 PM

As much as everyone else hates it, I love my ME. Might not be able to multi-task very much, but it keeps on working for me. I don't like multi-tasking when video is processing anyway.

SteveL wrote on 5/12/2005, 8:06 PM

I believe Microsoft formally ended no-charge support for Win98 in 2003. Support on a charge-per-incident basis is available 6/06.

But, for all practical purposes, consider Windows 98 (and 95 for that matter) "no longer supported".

More and more new software does not run on Win 9x.

For those still in doubt, XP is much more stable. Further, it suffers less (or not at all) from the steady deterioration in performance and stability seen in the Win9x series.

Steve