The world shudders as Win98 gets support reprieve

[ayoub_ibrahim]

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.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34826.html

[The PIT]

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.

[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.

[The PIT]

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.

[Taz]

Maybe if MS reduced the cost of their OSes more people would be inclined to upgrade

[The PIT]

Thats why you work for a company that allows you have it at home for free.

[High_Jumbllama]

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.

[rugger]

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

[Gurm]

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

[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.

[rugger]

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.

[Wombat]

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.

[TnT]

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.

[leech]

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

[Gurm]

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

- Gurm