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162 Comments
- tito13kfm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+61In other news: Thousands of IT workers nation wide let out a great sigh of relief.
Seriously, working on Windows 9x machines is about my least favorite thing to do. And most of the clients refuse to upgrade, but now they pretty much have to as it is no longer supported and will be considered vulnerable. - talor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40They should have pulled ME before it was released :P
- inaxdaze, on 10/12/2007, -7/+371. Using "M$" in a sentence stopped being cool about 10 years ago
2. Just because they're stopping offering support for a product doesn't mean that the copyright expires.. - insertnamehere, on 10/12/2007, -3/+32Why would you ever want to?
- rodball, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27Wait! I know I can get a few more years out of my P1, 120 MHZ, 32 MB system!
- jaydawg53, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20No doubt; WinXP has it's issues, but it's more stable than any Win9x system by leaps and bounds.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"...but now they pretty much have to as it is no longer supported and will be considered vulnerable."
Not really. There are still people out there running 3.11.
Besides, there aren't many other Windows-based options for machines with less than 128 meg of ram.
Granted, any corporation with any money whatsoever should have abandoned such old software and hardware years ago, but there are still going to be millions of machines running legacy windows OSes for years to come, in homes and small businesses all over the world. - russizm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15The best thing to come out of that era is System Restore.
the end. - Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Those same businesses are the ones who call me to ask if I can come over and un-jam their dot matrix printer.
Time to upgrade. $299 at Dell, and it will even play minesweeper. Welcome to 1999! - kaniz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15About time.
You know though, I had a friend that refused to upgrade past Windows 98 (not even 98SE, just plain old 98), and would always bitch abou thow much he hated microsoft/windows. He'd use FreeBSD now and then, but get fedup with it and go back to 98, then bitch about it - but refused to ever ever upgrade.
That always left me scratching my head. - thenativeraver, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15~Tips a fourty ounce~
Here's to the good times old friend, you will never be forgotten. - Smeed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Im betting the majority of the people who are running windows 9x on their main PCs dont even know what Linux is anyhow.
- lightningrod220, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16The rule of thumb I go with in regards to a useful computer is whether its specs are higher than that of Palm devices. If a Palm device has a higher clock speed than your desktop or laptop PC or Mac, you need to upgrade.
- ramsinks.com, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14They should open source 95, 98. That would be tight.
- crmaykish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Chances are if they are forcing everyone to UPGRADE to XP, then those machines won't run Vista anyway.
- bfdhud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Funny how they force everyone to upgrade to xp this close to the Vista launch.
- jaydawg53, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16Yeah Geterix, you've got a good point there about anythign before OSX; Win9x had just as many problems, but one thing Mac users couldn't argue until OSX was stability; all the MacOSes before X blew chunks. Best thing Apple ever did was basing the Mac OS on a UNIX kernel.
- maxkelley, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11This is crazy! Nearly every single computer at my school runs Windows 98... on a P4! First of all, I blame the school district for wasting perfectly good P4 2.8GHz's to run W98 on, but Microsoft should continue support. I know an endless list of people that still use 9x.. Oh well, at least I don't have to worry :)
*hops back over to penguin-land* - NJank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10(with enough RAM)
and there's the catch. - crmaykish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Slim to none unfortunately. That would be fun to see.
- silverstrike, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Good lord.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
There, go use a modern stable operating system. I can't imagine what 95 does that Linux won't for a desktop user. - SgtStarscream, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9As a former ME Tech Support Rep, I must say it's about damn time. That OS was trash when it was released. I always regretted moving up from 9x support. ME had/has sooo many issues. I for one am glad to see it DIE.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9i stopped fixing 9x machines a year ago.. they tend to be so old and slow that it isnt worth my time or my customers money to even look at their machines.
- ThisGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Millions of people will go out and buy XP as a result of this, they'll spend hundreds of pounds and dollars.
In a years time Vista will be here and XP will lose support from many sources, and people will again spend hundreds upgrading their OS.
It's criminal. - inactive, on 11/04/2008, -5/+13Hopefully this brings upon the end of worrying how IE 5 users will view your sites. With IE 5.5 for OS X also disappearing, things could be getting brighter in the future of webdevelopment and standards.
Also for those who think this is great for Linux, please tell me HOW? If these PC's are being used in enterprises, using proprietary Windows software, what good is a switch to Linux? Stop wanting the world to switch to Linux, it WON'T HAPPEN. Why? The business world runs on Windows whether you zealots like it or not. - OutrightLie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9System restore is flaky at best. It gets disabled on every computer I am responsible for. It takes up neccessary hard drive space, and stores viruses and other malware. You think you get all the viruses off a system, and then something breaks... "oh look, system restore, let's try that!" and then your system may work, but you have all those viruses and malware back that you spent 3 hours trying to remove a month ago.
Last Known Good Configuration is a good start to system restore, but system restore in general is not a good tool. - computerjoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I find Windows 2000 the perfect operating system. It's very stable and takes features from both XP and 9x.
- Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8This is great news for the Linux community. This could make a lot of switchers out of people with older computers that can't otherwise upgrade to XP due to hardware limitations. I'm not saying people on 9x would just switch, but if their OS becomes FUBAR, switching to Linux would be more logical since you will no longer be able to update 9x. The security minded may look at Linux a lot more seriously in this situation.
On a unrelated subject... Is the spell checker down? I haven't been able to use the spell checker for the past few days.. I get an error every time. It may help to note I am using the latest Firefox on Windows XP. - Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8So does this mean this will never happen?
http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/ - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I have a Compaq Deskpro XE 560 (as in original Pentium I, 60 mhz) running Win95. The only upgrade is to the TCP/IP stack (WinSock ver. 2). It's still pretty useful to me, for the past 4 years it's been connected to the Internet 24/7. No sign of any virus, mostly thanks to the hardware based firewall in front of it.
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Thank god. I'm glad to see ME is being put out of my misery.....
- IcanFLY, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Now they just need to get rid of Window XP Home Edition with its stupid filesharing and guest account and lack of control of NT file descriptors.
- krahzee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Why is this a big deal?
This idea that this will somehow benefit the Linux community by promoting people to shift to Linux after a 9x install goes FUBAR, is stupid.
Anyone ever hear of reinstalling? Just because MS doesn't offer support for Win 98 for example, doesn't mean you can't reinstall it on a computer. Plus with all of the resources on the web these days, a solution to a problem is only a google search away. If you are an average user (not tech savvy) why install a completely forgein OS you first have to learn, vs. something you already know?
Look, we all know what a piece of ***** ME could be, but 98 wasn't that bad for it's time.
My father, for example, still uses it at work for his email and web browsing (although he does use Firefox now). The only other app he uses on it is Quicken. He has no need to upgrade his 6+ year old box for what he uses it for. As long as he backs up his important data it could crash next week and he would be fine. Why spend the money? I'm sure when it craps out ( think blown motherboard, hd etc...) he will buy a new low end PC with the latest version of Windows and run that into the ground as well. In the meantime, he saved himself the cost of upgrading to an XP box, and will probably buy a Vista box at some point.
Unless your a gamer, graphic artist, web designer, in multimedia, etc... upgrading for the sake of upgrading, doesn't always make sense. This hardware/ OS elitism that sometimes shows it's head on digg (the three factions - MS, Apple, Linux) tends to ignore the fact that most average users don't give a ***** what OS it is as long as it does what they want it to do, and they know how to make it preform those tasks.
The digg users really need to chill on making predictions on the way the masses will go with thier tech choices and come to terms with the fact that we are the exception, not the norm, based on our understanding and knowlege of this stuff. - wilkeson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I doubt that this will encourage a rash of upgrading. At this point most people running ME or below are usually doing so because of old software that will only run on that platform. One can certainly dream though.
- CapnCornflake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I gave up on expecting security updates when I realized my P1 era Packard Bell couldn't upgrade to Windows 98.
Whatever. 95 suffices perfectly fine. And if you don't have that special "Internet Explorer Edition," it's INCREDIBLY stable. - drumt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I agree, no rash of upgrading. There are still holdouts...MANY holdouts. I pulled a 3.11 box serving four computers about two years ago. They were not a major player in any sense of the term. The Big H.O.
- kolop1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7what planet is this on? I dont believe your school would do that.
- snugsoho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You know, i'm a Mac user now but if i had to switch back to using Windows for some unknown god forsaken reason i would probably try to get my hands on a copy of Windows 98 SE. In the past i have always used Windows and XP was basically the last straw so then OS X 10.3 was released i immediately jumped ship but i never really had any ill feelings against 98 SE, fair enough it is ugly by today's standards but it always seemed to work or rather i never experienced the kind of frustrations using i have had to endure using all other versions of desktop Windows from 95 onwards. Waving goodbye to Windows 9x is no doubt a good thing not to mention inevitable but by doing so Microsoft are in my opinion signing off their best ever version of Windows.
- sp0rk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I was running the Windows Whistler (and eventually XP) builds on my Pentium II 450MHz with 126MB RAM no problem in late 2000/early 2001. If anyone has less RAM than that, I suggest they go to Pricewatch and spend a whopping $12 to get a stick of 128MB SDRAM.
- warnergt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Whoever runs your school's IT department should be fired.
- neurokaotix, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9"There, go use a modern stable operating system. I can't imagine what 95 does that Linux won't for a desktop user."
I agree. Linux is finally AT LEAST where Windows 95 was in terms of usability for desktop users. - NJank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6no. I think most people who use 9x have old hardware, and "if it ain't broke..."
either that, or it's home users, with little computer knowledge, who need it to dial into AOL. "Sure there's newer stuff, but my VCR from 1997 is still working just fine, why shouldn't my PC be as well? It's not like I need to do anything different with it." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There is one thing I'll miss tough; Being able to reinstall the OS in 30 minutes without trashing all your programs and profile.
- NimbleRabit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You guys severely overestimate IT departments at schools. Generally its a couple of people (one of my schools only had one) who don't know That much about computers they are just smarter than the average person.
They call some networking people in to set it up and they are smart enough, with instructions, to keep the network running and peoples computers working. They aren't amazing or anything and its never a huge department. - ModernDayDarwin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I personally stopped runnning 9x long before XP came out. I believe I was running windows 2k, and was quite reluctant to switch to 9x. While I never had many headaches with 9x, I can say my "true love" operating system was 2k. Not many would agree I'm sure, but I never had problems with 2k, NEVER.
- spectre_25gt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7A sigh of relief? I don't think so. This just means that the people who continue to run 9x systems (and I assure you, many still will) no longer have security updates coming out for them.
- Amplix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Yeah people still use it, notably small business in an office type enviroment, the people thought they got a bargain on 5 computers when they just got really old ones. A bargain's a bargain right? :[
I for one am glad this finally occured, now I can say Microsoft has stopped supporting their computers, but you know some of them will be outraged on how microsoft could have possibly done that after they had just purchased the lot of PCs... *sigh*
Its a vicious cycle - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7*forgiven
- jaydawg53, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Oh yes, we dropped all Win9x support here 2 years ago. I was wondering how long it would be before MS finally decided it was time to drop the Win9x OS.
- Duston, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hate to burst your bubble but the type of user who is still running 9x at home isn't the type of user who jumps to Linux because they can no longer call Microsoft for a $250 support call.
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