Win98 Gets Reprieve
At the eleventh hour, Microsoft has pulled Windows 98 back from the brink. Originally scheduled for the scrap heap this Friday - 16th January, the operating system is getting a new lease on life. Win ME support was scheduled to cease on 31st December 2004
On Monday, Microsoft capitulated to customer pressure and announced that it would now continue extended support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and for Windows ME until June 30, 2006.

Not all bad news then ..................

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Willum

Willum,

That is good news. I am running 98SE on one computer an XP on the other. After removing the bugs, 98 has been flawless for over a year and I like the system. XP has grown on me and is superior in some areas. Would like to keep both systems.

Fran in Florida

Hi Bill,

It is certainly good news for you and I since both of us are still running 98SE. I haven't had any problems to date (fingers crossed) so haven't had any need for technical assistance. I find 98SE to be very stable and reliable. If I ever run into any trouble with the OS my youngest son will bail me out. He built my system and set it up, so I know who to go to if need be! Ha Ha

Thanks for the "heads up" on the latest virus. I'll be on the lookout for it.

Best Wishes, Chuck

Hi Bill,
that's great news. I love win 98 on my laptop , far more than I do xp on my main p.c.
X.P. scares me a bit.
On my old windows 95 Bell Packard & my NEC win 98 laptop , I received a cd rom and a floppy disk , so that if anything ghastly ever went wrong , these disks allowed me to reformat the hard drive and restore the system to the same stage as the day I bought it. I've had to do that once for my laptop, and a couple of times for the old win 95 computer when it totally crashed.

I didn't get the same type of disk set up with my dell xp, so there's possibly another way of doing it, ( they gave me a heap of program cd's) but it just leaves me feeling a bit less comfortable.

( love reading keyboard manuals, hate reading computer manuals)

Anyway that's great news.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bill Norrie:

If you're still using or supporting Win98, that's good news. But don't
celebrate too much: What it mostly means is that Microsoft will continue
to offer limited paid support (at $35 per call) for Win98 users; and may-
-- may--- offer additional security patches and updates for the aging
OS.

Microsoft had previously announced that the Win98 Knowledgebase and
other self-help items would remain alive until 2006. That remains in
effect.

It's great that Microsoft has taken the pressure off Win98 users, but it
doesn't change the fact that Win98 is getting quite long in the tooth,
in tech terms. Even if Microsoft releases additional security patches,
there are fundamental limits: Win98 predates a whole range of
current and new technologies--- USB2, support for huge hard drives,
newer CPU types and optimizations, SATA, etc. etc.--- and there's only
so much back-filling you can do.

Larry Hawk

I too read that post on the Langalist..........

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Willum

also misleading, I ran usb2 on a win98se laptop as soon as it became possible, years before XP came out.

The bottom line question: "Why would you still want Windows 98" ?

Fran said "XP has grown on me and is superior in some areas".
In comparing 98 to XP, I can't think of any areas that 98 is superior. Enlighten me please.

Maybe Bill Norrie knows, now that we all know he reads Fred Langa too.
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Larry Hawk
Technics For All

to save money if you don't want to pay for XP Larry, and never intend to upgrade your other programs, and are content with what you have now, considering that upgrading often entails hardware costs too.

XP is ok since SP1, well supportive of hardware now and superior in its memory allocation and multitasking. My laptop has no floppy built in (SD slot built in instead) no serial and no parallel connectors - it's the similar story in hardware terms; had to buy a usb to serial cable to be able to do unlimited programmable time lapse photography with the digicam and user program the non-wireless mobile phone easily.

But you have no choice when buying a new computer anyway