Microsoft will not fix a serious flaw in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition because a patch could break other applications. The security bug relates to Windows Explorer and could let an intruder commandeer a vulnerable PC, Microsoft warned in April. The software maker has made fixes available for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000, but it has found that eliminating the vulnerability in Windows 98 and ME is “not feasible,” it said.
No Fix for ‘Critical’ Hole in Windows 98, ME
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Kind of sounds like they are saying we created a problem that we can’t fix. The key word here is can’t instead of won’t. So much for the idea that MS has some of the brightest programmers in the world. Maybe they should give the source code for the flaw to the open source community. But I guess it wouldn’t look to good when they came up with a patch in 24 hours or so. 🙂
Nothing is “unfeasible”.
Win98 and specially ME are so full of patches right now that one extra patch *cough* hack *cough* wouldn’t hurt anyway, and i’m sure that’s all it’s needed to fix the hole.
Vista is comming soon, and if they keep patching all their old OS’s they wouldn’t do anything else, judging by the time it takes them.
MS just doesn’t want to, period.
Win98 and specially ME are so full of patches right now that one extra patch *cough* hack *cough* wouldn’t hurt anyway, and i’m sure that’s all it’s needed to fix the hole.
They’re equally full of unpatched holes.
MS just doesn’t want to, period.
Why would they? Microsoft hasn’t been maintaining 98 and ME. At best they’ve been trying to maintain the image of their 9x line (except when comparing it to XP). They’ve finally given up.
Good to hear from somebody on the design team for Windows 9X. The article states: “To do so would require re-engineering a significant amount of a critical core component of the operating system”, and because of the differences in win9x and NT kernels and api, they may be telling the truth, but you seem to know better. Thanks for informing us
In fact I wouldn’t be suprised if it’s actually “wont” instead of “cant”. Wouldn’t suprise me if this is a deliberate lie to encourage folks to upgrade to XP.
And so they should too.
Windows 98 stems from a very old opperating system, older than Linux, older than most of the OS’s we see today. And when DOS, the operating system, was created a global network of computers was something still being talked about in universities.
If anybody is a programmer on this thread, I know you understand the need to throw away whole parts of your program, because you understanding of how things work has changed since you started the project. The same goes for large corporations, but they have bigger issues, but the same issues all the same.
Microsoft should be commened for all that they have done for the industry, you think the internet would be at the state it is now if companies like AOL and Microsoft didn’t get the ball rolling? No. Sorry I am off on a tangent, Microsoft did the right thing by adimiting that their old OS is broken and people should move away from Windows 9x and move towards XP or Vista.
MS actually tried to stop the ball with their proprietary MSN and eventually were very late in the game.
For very long time they perceived internet as a threat.
That was not my point and I think you are puposely missing it. If it wasn’t for the dominance of Microsoft, with cheap PC’s for the masses that had an OS that worked enough for most of the world, Netscape wouldn’t have had a platform to provide access to the World Wide Web.
So as you are sitting there bashing Microsoft over the internet, just think of who helped promote the internet to where it is today.
So as you are sitting there bashing Microsoft over the internet, just think of who helped promote the internet to where it is today.
The engineers who made the first utilities to communicate with eatchother deserve most credit.Those ideas and tools where avaible for free to pass on.This whas way before anyone had heard anything about MS.Guess who grabbed several pieces from everywhere and?
That may be true, but with out mass consumption the internet would still be used in labs at universities.
Microsoft did the right thing by adimiting that their old OS is broken and people should move away from Windows 9x and move towards XP or Vista.
I am so sick of this permissive attitude toward the forced upgrade cycle. Old computer hardware works fine. Why should old software be any different? You can buy an m68k Mac with OS7 and get a lot of use out of it, but I can’t use the Windows system and games I bought a few years ago because that’s just not profitable enough for Microsoft. My NES still works. Why doesn’t my Windows 98?
It does work. There’s a flaw that you can easily fix yourself.
If your nintendo stops working, Nintendo won’t fix it for you.
Your NES is a nich platform, it is not expected to work with every device and perpectual under the sun. Plus your NES is a very simple system compared to a modern opperating system. Same goes with your OS7, if it worked so great why is there an OS8, OS9, OSX, OSX.1, OSX.2, etc? Why is are there constant fixes to those OS’s allowed and when Microsoft says they won’t support 98 anymore you get pissed off? Is Apple still supporting and updating your OS7? No they are not and for good reason.
Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. Microsoft are just trying to increase customer awareness of a small flaw that has been in the product since 1998. Nothing has changed regarding your ability to use windows 98. As someone else pointed out.Just download the freezonealarm s/w firewall and block the port.
“Windows 98 stems from a very old opperating system, older than Linux, older than most of the OS’s we see today. And when DOS, the operating system, was created a global network of computers was something still being talked about in universities.”
Yes, but Linux stems from UNIX, which is much older than DOS so in that respect its lineage is longer than Windows/DOS.
“Yes, but Linux stems from UNIX, which is much older than DOS so in that respect its lineage is longer than Windows/DOS.”
True but you are only as good as your base. And DOS as a base OS wasn’t that great.
protagonist,
Try to not blaime a developer for not keeping an outdated OS patched. As stated in the article the solution is to use a third party firewall (software or hardware based). Since neither Win98 or WinME came with a firewall the customer who should already be running a firewall will be safe. I’m actually surprised when I see someone still running these OS with out third party security solutions (ie: Firewall and Anti-Virus).
It’s about time everyone retired 98 and me anyways.
This is one of the reasons why I switched to a Mac and why I’m replacing Windows to Linux on my older machines.
Some examples, I’m running OSX on a first gen iMac and I’m running Ubuntu on an old IBM Pentium 100 and on an HP 1500MHz. The only PC that could be able to run WinXP is the HP but I only have 256 of RAM on that one… but it runs Ubuntu very nicely!
I can’t make XP run on old machines, and the older Windows versions aren’t supported anymore (which means every new bug/hole will be ignored by Microsoft). But I’m able to run OSX and a lot of Linux distros on very old machines that couldn’t run XP. Hell, I can run OSX and Ubuntu on a 233MHz iMac (without the need to ‘activate’ it) !
And this means running a solid OS with total support from the makers. Buying Microsoft software feels like throwing money in the garbage…
Sorry my poor english.
This is one of the reasons why I switched to a Mac and why I’m replacing Windows to Linux on my older machines.
I guess you’re saying that it’s because you have old hardware that runs newer versions of OSX and Ubuntu?
Because it’s certainly true that Apple ain’t supporting MacOS on any of those platforms!
Because it’s certainly true that Apple ain’t supporting MacOS on any of those platforms!
No it isn’t.
Apple supports MacOS X 10.3 on any G3 Mac (and up) and supports Mac OS X 10.4 on any G3 Macs with firewire (and up).
I’m getting the max out of my old computers by using OSX and Ubuntu Linux.
Edited 2006-06-09 23:54
Apple supports MacOS X 10.3 on G3 Macs and up. Apple supports Mac OS X 10.4 on G3 Macs with firewire and up.
And they no longer support MacOS 9 or earlier on any platform or Mac OS X 10.1 or 10.2, correct?
It’s not unusual for companies to EOL software, and 5 years after last sale is a fairly typical support life time.
Exactly, win98 is coming close to a 10 year cycle. MS is damned if they do and damned if they don’t sometimes.
“Exactly, win98 is coming close to a 10 year cycle. MS is damned if they do and damned if they don’t sometimes.”
That statement is probably very true. It would seem to me, though, that when you produce a product that turns out to have a flaw this serious you have a moral obligation to either fix it replace it with a product that works properly even if it is old. But then the the phrase “moral business” seems to be a bit of an oxymoron these days. 🙂
And they no longer support MacOS 9 or earlier on any platform or Mac OS X 10.1 or 10.2, correct?
10.1 and 10.2 are not supported because actually 10.3 runs faster on legacy hardware like the 233MHz iMac. Newer versions of Mac OS X are usually a lot faster, it gets better and better. Try comparing Jaguar and Panther on an old Mac.
But thats not the point, the point is I can run Mac OS X 10.3 (released in 2003) on an iMac G3 (released in 1998) with full support. Or I can run many Linux distros like Ubuntu, again with total support.
I can’t run WinXP on a 1998 PC even with the RAM maxed out…
ohh by the way, you can still run OS9 on every PowerPC version of Mac OS X… for free!
Edited 2006-06-10 00:41
I can’t run WinXP on a 1998 PC even with the RAM maxed out…
I have a 1997 Dell with 512mb of memory on it that until I replaced it with a laptop a year ago ran XP. And if my memory of my 2002 vintage imac running 10.2 is correct, with about the same performance as I’d get on a 99 vintage imac running 10.2
I have a 1997 Dell with 512mb of memory on it that until I replaced it with a laptop a year ago ran XP
Now thats really great! Windows ME wouldn’t install on anything less than 150 Mhz so I can imagine that WinXP would be lots of fun to use…
Come on! I can use Ubuntu on a 100Mhz computer and I can use OSX on a 233Mhz computer. I mean, I can REALLY use them. They are quite nice to work on. Don’t come and tell me you can work on WinXP running in a 1997 computer… you should be able to work on Notepad only… and even then…
And if my memory of my 2002 vintage imac running 10.2 is correct
Try 10.3 and you will be amazed. Not kidding. Huge difference.
Edited 2006-06-10 01:07
Come on! I can use Ubuntu on a 100Mhz computer and I can use OSX on a 233Mhz computer. I mean, I can REALLY use them. They are quite nice to work on.
Can’t speak for OS X, but you must be a patient man to use Ubuntu on a 100MHz computer. I have a Centrino 1.7GHz and I have noticeable delays for _everything_…
I’m not talking about Win98 apps, I’m talking about DOS apps. Win98 was the last OS from Microsoft that could run any stuff I had on DOS.
Can you run System 7 applications on OS X? MS-DOS is pretty old, you know.
Because the most recent versions of OSX are actually faster on legacy hardware. Thats a fact. Why would I run 10.2 if 10.3 is faster?
Because you have to pay for the upgrade? Isn’t why people are upset at Microsoft right now?
With the antivirus, antispyware and firewall software enabled? I’m not using any of these in Linux and OSX.
I never had to use one of these software on my personal WinXP installations. Then again, I tend to stay away from malicious software… just like I tend to stay away from untrusted repositories for Linux.
I have a 1997 Dell with 512mb of memory on it that until I replaced it with a laptop a year ago ran XP
Now thats really great! Windows ME wouldn’t install on anything less than 150 Mhz so I can imagine that WinXP would be lots of fun to use… [/i]
It has a 700mhz processor, and yeah, it ran just fine for running office 2k, my business accounting software, and even flight sim and train sim. it’s no gamer machine, but it does. (I’m currently using it as my main freebsd development box.)
And frankly, as someone who has a lot of experience with Ubuntu, I call BS. I’ve got 2ghz machines with radeon controllers that gnome is glacial on, even on hoary, and dapper’s eye candy makes my mid level nvidia cards sad.
oh, and please don’t try to tell a kernel developer that you can run almost any old application on any linux. It makes us spit soda on our lcd screens.
sure, i run linux distros on 100mzh processors. they’re called “cell phones”. and even on them it’s sluggish.
And frankly, as someone who has a lot of experience with Ubuntu, I call BS. I’ve got 2ghz machines with radeon controllers that gnome is glacial on, even on hoary, and dapper’s eye candy makes my mid level nvidia cards sad.
You don’t have to run a standard Ubuntu installation on older systems. You can do a “server” (minimal) installation and add a simple environment like icewm, wmaker, enlightenment, etc.
With that said, my sister runs Debian etch with GNOME on her P-III 400MHz, 192MB of RAM. It works just fine.
I have a 1997 Dell with 512mb of memory on it that until I replaced it with a laptop a year ago ran XP
Now thats really great! Windows ME wouldn’t install on anything less than 150 Mhz so I can imagine that WinXP would be lots of fun to use…
It has a 700mhz processor, and yeah, it ran just fine for running office 2k, my business accounting software, and even flight sim and train sim. it’s no gamer machine, but it does. (I’m currently using it as my main freebsd development box.)
Uhm, 700mhz CPUs were Pentium 3s. Which did not come out until 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_3
And frankly, as someone who has a lot of experience with Ubuntu, I call BS. I’ve got 2ghz machines with radeon controllers that gnome is glacial on, even on hoary, and dapper’s eye candy makes my mid level nvidia cards sad.
oh, and please don’t try to tell a kernel developer that you can run almost any old application on any linux. It makes us spit soda on our lcd screens.
sure, i run linux distros on 100mzh processors. they’re called “cell phones”. and even on them it’s sluggish.
Apparently you don’t have experience with Ubuntu. I just installed Dapper Drake on a Celeron 2.7ghz, with 128mb of PC-133 ram (yeah, I was shocked they’d make a socket 478 board that still used PC-133) and a Geforce 5200. It ran quite nicely, and flew circles around Windows XP after only installing Avast anti-virus and kerio firewall.
And yet you claim your a kernel developer? For the Pentium 5 I assume….Anyone who would be a kernel developer would KNOW that a 100mhz processor that they’d use in a cell phone and 100mhz Pentium processor is nothing similar. Anyone with an AMD knows that Mhz is not everything.
Edited 2006-06-10 07:19
Uhm, 700mhz CPUs were Pentium 3s. Which did not come out until 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_3
So my memory was off by two years. It’s a ’99 Dell rather than a ’97 Dell.
I just installed Dapper Drake on a Celeron 2.7ghz[i]
Which is hardly a 100mhz system, nor the 1.7ghz system that I was describing.
[i]It ran quite nicely, and flew circles around Windows XP after only installing Avast anti-virus and kerio firewall.
Apparently you don’t know how to configure XP. I’ve been running it for a while now on a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.3ghz celeron and 500mb of ram, with a lot of software on it, and in side-by-side comparisons with my generic 3ghz hypterthreaded Xeon system with Quadra FX1300 with 2gb fo ddr2 ram firefox renders much faster on the XP system.
And yet you claim your a kernel developer? For the Pentium 5 I assume….Anyone who would be a kernel developer would KNOW that a 100mhz processor that they’d use in a cell phone and 100mhz Pentium processor is nothing similar. Anyone with an AMD knows that Mhz is not everything.
I never claimed they were “similar”, or that 100mhz was an end-all-be-all. Excuse me for assuming that the readership of an OS forum didn’t need to have that pointed out to them.
If you’d like a lecture on the similarities and differences between the ARM 9 processors we typically design into cellphones and the various generations of the Pentium family, or a detailed explanation for why you see different results for Ubuntu/XP on your hardware than I see on mine, this can be arranged.
Apparently you don’t know how to configure XP. I’ve been running it for a while now on a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.3ghz celeron and 500mb of ram, with a lot of software on it, and in side-by-side comparisons with my generic 3ghz hypterthreaded Xeon system with Quadra FX1300 with 2gb fo ddr2 ram firefox renders much faster on the XP system.
And yet you claim your a kernel developer? For the Pentium 5 I assume….Anyone who would be a kernel developer would KNOW that a 100mhz processor that they’d use in a cell phone and 100mhz Pentium processor is nothing similar. Anyone with an AMD knows that Mhz is not everything.
I never claimed they were “similar”, or that 100mhz was an end-all-be-all. Excuse me for assuming that the readership of an OS forum didn’t need to have that pointed out to them.
If you’d like a lecture on the similarities and differences between the ARM 9 processors we typically design into cellphones and the various generations of the Pentium family, or a detailed explanation for why you see different results for Ubuntu/XP on your hardware than I see on mine, this can be arranged
And apparently you don’t know how to use or close out italics tags in posts.
Let’s look at what you just stated…. “500mb of ram” That makes all the difference with XP. I once ran XP on a Pentium 2 @ 266mhz with 256mb of ram and it was actually almost usable. Take out half of that Ram and it’s an entirely different story. Ram, whether you know it or not makes a HUGE difference in XP and any other OS. Memory management pretty much sucks in XP. For example, I currently have 3gb of ram in my system. Yet Windows still insists on using the stinking Pagefile.
Second off, you shouldn’t have to KNOW how to configure XP (considering all I did was install XP, Firefox, Avast and Kerio. I’ve been using XP for a very long time, trust me, I know how to ‘configure’ it. Plus you never state What OS you are running on the Xeon. Besides, Firefox does have issues with rendering pages in Linux. This is not Ubuntu’s or anyone’s faults except Mozilla themselves.
Well, you sure did make it sound like you were claiming all sorts of things. Embedded Operating Systems are an entirely different subject.
Let’s look at what you just stated…. “500mb of ram” That makes all the difference with XP.
Well, yes. But the claim I was responding to was a rather absolute “you can’t run XP on that vintage hardware”, not “you can’t run XP without less than X MB on that vintage hardware.”
Second off, you shouldn’t have to KNOW how to configure XP
If you only want it to run out-of-the box performance levels, that’s true. Every OS needs to be effectively configured to get the maximum performance out of given hardware. It doesn’t hurt to configure the hardware to match the OS(es) you intend to run on it either.
Plus you never state What OS you are running on the Xeon.
Actually, I did: Ubuntu Dapper Drake. (said system is currently running FC5, which, for whatever reason, is even slower at graphics. me thinkest that X11R7 needs tuning and that gcc 4.1 doesn’t do such a hot job of generating code.)
Besides, Firefox does have issues with rendering pages in Linux. This is not Ubuntu’s or anyone’s faults except Mozilla themselves.
It does. So does Gnome have rendering problems. But, again, the original discussion was about relative performance of Ubuntu versus XP, and Firefox is one of the few applications that run on both. I could compare office 2000 performance on my laptop to open office performance on Ubuntu/FC. The laptop still wins, except for commute-intensive spreadsheet stuff. Even, ironically, emacs, tends to perform faster on the XP laptop.
Well, you sure did make it sound like you were claiming all sorts of things. Embedded Operating Systems are an entirely different subject.
Nah, you just read more into it than I put there.
The only thing I claimed about cellphones at 100mhz is true: Linux runs slow on cell phones. I know. I’ve ported it to cell phones, and I’ve seen the performance of several other ports. I certainly never claimed that a 100mhz arm 9 was equivalent to a 100mhz pentium.
Once upon a time, “embedded” operating systems were an entirely different subject, and to most of the embedded community, they still are. But to a lot of the embedded community, “embedded” has come to include things like Linux on cell phones, which, in practice isn’t much different than Linux on x86. (And yes, having done the port, I can tell you, in great detail, what the differences are.)
and yes, since I designed my first embedded OS around the z80 in ’79, for a data aquisition system, I feel confident that I have a good grasp of what an embedded OS is.
Gtk+ 2.x has at any point in time a number of areas that could benefit from visual performance improvements. It’s a subject of regular contention because it’s regularly exaggerated. Any visual performance difference has little to do with GCC 4.1, when most software for Windows XP is compiled for the Pentium Pro with a myriad of versions of MSVC and without any aggressive optimization.
In my opinion Firefox behaves similarly-annoyingly on both Windows and Linux. OpenOffice.org is decidedly more annoying on Windows than on Linux, but I don’t appreciate the performance of the program on any platform. Gtk+ applications in general suffer from more visual defects in Windows in my experience, so comparison of the same Gtk+ programs on both platforms will likely not favor Windows. Emacs shouldn’t seem particularly slow on any platform with such powerful hardware unless there’s something wrong with the configuration of your display system, but it certainly has never seemed faster in Windows. I’d actually expect it to be marginally slower in certain areas because of the variance in expense of implementation primitives, but in using it over a number of years I’ve found more annoyance endemic of emacs itself rather than the platform it’s running on.
This is all subjective conversation, though, and not related to Ubuntu directly since I don’t use it. I have however used very many cross-platform tools on many versions of Windows and many Linux distributions. Other operating systems as well, but they aren’t really the topic under discussion.
Now thats really great! Windows ME wouldn’t install on anything less than 150 Mhz so I can imagine that WinXP would be lots of fun to use…
Just so you know, you can install WinME on sub-P150 hardware, all you have to do is boot to a DOS floppy and run setup with the following switches:
setup /is /iq /nm
I ran Linux on a computer with a 100MHz Pentium for two years and while it was certainly usable then I would not compare the experience to a modern sense of usability and look upon it favorably. That is to say that I simply wouldn’t waste my time running it as a desktop computer now except possibly to display remote sessions from a much more powerful computer. Especially if we were to consider using more modern programs. If I were to apply a similar level of tolerance for poor performance I could toss XP or Windows 2000 on a computer from 1997. For that matter, I probably would have never purchased a faster computer in the first place if I felt that such a computer was sufficient. So “quite nice” is not the way that I would describe using such a computer now.
10.1 and 10.2 are not supported because actually 10.3 runs faster on legacy hardware like the 233MHz iMac. Newer versions of Mac OS X are usually a lot faster, it gets better and better. Try comparing Jaguar and Panther on an old Mac.
lol that sounds like a nice bit of marketing hyperboil.
The bottom line is that apple dumps OS support far faster than MS and thats a fact. People want to compare the two ? Call up apple and ask for a fix for OS9 sometime and see what they say. Its no comparison.
But thats not the point, the point is I can run Mac OS X 10.3 (released in 2003) on an iMac G3 (released in 1998) with full support. Or I can run many Linux distros like Ubuntu, again with total support.
Same thing with Windows XP. What hardware released in 1998 does XP not support? Hell all the drivers you’ll likely need are even on the CD.
I can’t run WinXP on a 1998 PC even with the RAM maxed out…
I highly doubt you have tried. I’ve run both operating systems and hands down Windows XP requires far less resources then OS X (ANY version).
ohh by the way, you can still run OS9 on every PowerPC version of Mac OS X… for free!
Thats neat. I can run Windows 9X on hardware purchased today but whats the point ?
The bottom line is that apple dumps OS support far faster than MS and thats a fact.
Because the most recent versions of OSX are actually faster on legacy hardware. Thats a fact. Why would I run 10.2 if 10.3 is faster?
Same thing with Windows XP. What hardware released in 1998 does XP not support? Hell all the drivers you’ll likely need are even on the CD
You can barelly use it. That is the point. Windows XP on a Pentium 266Mhz ? Lets get real…
I can’t run WinXP on a 1998 PC even with the RAM maxed out…
I tried it, even using nLite. It is not fun at all… Ubuntu runs quite faster.
hands down Windows XP requires far less resources then OS X (ANY version)
With the antivirus, antispyware and firewall software enabled? I’m not using any of these in Linux and OSX.
Thats neat. I can run Windows 9X on hardware purchased today but whats the point ?
The point is it would be nice to run old DOS stuff by having Win98 support inside WinXP. I can run OS9 apps inside OSX. I can run virtually any app made since 1997. The same can’t be said about Windows.
Because the most recent versions of OSX are actually faster on legacy hardware. Thats a fact. Why would I run 10.2 if 10.3 is faster?
Isn’t the point of running an old OS to save money ? Or maybe the old OS fills your needs and thats all you need?
You can barelly use it. That is the point. Windows XP on a Pentium 266Mhz ? Lets get real…
I’m being real. I’ve done it both ways and OS X is a flippin’ dog with less than 512 megs of RAM while I can get decent performce from XP on the same era hardware with 256, sometimes 128 if you really strip out the unneeded services and other overhead.
I tried it, even using nLite. It is not fun at all… Ubuntu runs quite faster.
Agreed ubuntu is a great OS. Christ running any OS on hardware that old isn’t *fun*. Its a tradeoff to get more life out of the hardware.
With the antivirus, antispyware and firewall software enabled? I’m not using any of these in Linux and OSX.
I’m not running any of them on windows. I have a hardware firewall and if I suspect a problem I can do a scan with AVG as needed, its not running all the time. Software firewalls are about worthless boat anchors in my book.
The point is it would be nice to run old DOS stuff by having Win98 support inside WinXP. I can run OS9 apps inside OSX. I can run virtually any app made since 1997. The same can’t be said about Windows.
Bullshit. How many companies had to wait on moving OS X due to issues with older software?
FAR more than had to wait on moving to NT from 9X due to compatability issues. You keep bringing up DOS software and I am confused by that, DOS software is from the early 90s and some of it DOES in run in XP, far more than any apple app from the early 90s runs on OS X.
I’m done with ya bro, I don’t think we’ll convince each other of anything and no matter what you run I hope you enjoy it because thats all that is important. :thumbs up:
I’m done with ya bro, I don’t think we’ll convince each other of anything and no matter what you run I hope you enjoy it because thats all that is important. :thumbs up:
Quite true. Nice to be able to chat without being called bad stuff…
Sorry my english.
+1
FAR more than had to wait on moving to NT from 9X due to compatability issues. You keep bringing up DOS software and I am confused by that, DOS software is from the early 90s and some of it DOES in run in XP, far more than any apple app from the early 90s runs on OS X.
Many Win16 applications are still working in WinXP. I remember having to use one at the beginning of my degree. Although it wasn’t completely stable, it was quite useable.
I have once tried to run some apps for Windows 2.03 (1988) in WinXP. Although they were quite simple (stuff like Notepad, Write), they still worked.
Microsoft can be blamed for a lot of things, but compatibility between Windows versions is usually good.
10.1 and 10.2 are not supported because actually 10.3 runs faster on legacy hardware like the 233MHz iMac. Newer versions of Mac OS X are usually a lot faster, it gets better and better. Try comparing Jaguar and Panther on an old Mac.
Wrong case here set by the original parent. It is not about supporting on older hardware. Much more expensive is when your software made for 10.0,1,2 doesn’t work under 10.3 or 4.
I know at least two people burned as this. (expensive proprietary) Software maker never made sp available in any other way but buying newer version. For those two world stoped spining, they can’t move on and there’s practicaly no support for 10.2. Don’t ask me which software, I only know it is HW related and dirvers crash on newer OS, but unfortunatelly can’t remember (although mac software is full of cases like this one).
I can’t run WinXP on a 1998 PC even with the RAM maxed out…
Well, that is a lie. In 98 PC was up to 350MHz and RAM was up to either 512MB or 1GB, don’t remember. XP on maxed computer like that runs just as OSX 10.3 on G3. It crawls, but it works. But problem with 10.4 is that Spotlight is the main consumer of RAM and disk. So, no you can’t run even decently on that machine. But if you’ll try to say you can, well then it is time to stop comparing speed of your computer to newer pocket calculators.
For your information, iMac from may.98 was able to have max 384MB of RAM, and all I can say to you is: I can’t run 10.4 on 512MB macMini with near to decent speed. And the largest reason is lack of RAM. CPU 233MHz
Second problem is VRAM, where graphic chip on this computer is Rage IIc with 2MB of RAM, but you could extra expand that with another 4MB. Large portion of OSX falls on GPU with 3D, or in your case on your CPU, because Rage IIc practicaly has no 3D. CPU 233MHz
October.98 version just differs on Rage Pro (6MB) and still only 384MB max. Again without 3D and too little of RAM.
Now lets just skip ’till DV/400 on october.99.
Max RAM 384MB, Graphic card ATI Rage 128 8MB, 400MHz
First iMac that could run (run at even slowest normal acceptable speed, not crawl) 10.4 when maxed out is iMac DV+ expandable up to 1024MB, 500MHz CPU, while still having sucky Rage 128 Pro with 8MB of RAM.
ohh by the way, you can still run OS9 on every PowerPC version of Mac OS X… for free!
Really, it is just that almost no software works as it should (under 10.0-10.2 runing those apps was so bad I didn’t even tried anymore, but I doubt it has got any better.). The only application which hasn’t suffered much from this was Photoshop, because I didn’t use fonts and such things under it, or better said my job wasn’t depending on them. Installing fonts under Classic and X was a mess, and so were other issues where OS9 often locked CD and such.
In the long run, I’m no MS fan. But I have to admit support for Win98 was much longer than anyone could expect (and it is HW vendors who stoped supporting it first). I for one am all for newer versions, after SP3 if this is MS related product.
Edited 2006-06-10 01:29
Yes, I know how much RAM my iMac has, I’m not lying to you. I’m not trolling.
I’m running 10.3 on an iMac 233MHz with 384 of RAM and an 80 GB HD. I can run Word, Excel, Keynote, Snak, Firefox, Mail, Powerpoint, Pages, Messenger, etc. I can have 4 apps openned at the same time. It works really great. So… I’m running a recent, stable and secure OS on my old Mac.
I was running Win98 on my P100 but now comes all these security and bug reports that won’t be fixe. What to do? WinXP will not run here. Ubuntu does run. So does Xubuntu. It runs slow but allows me to use the Internet far safer than Win98. I’m running a recent, stable and secure OS on my old PC.
Who lost? Microsoft. I’m not buying Windows again, but will surelly buy an Intel Mac just to be able to boot OSX and Ubuntu.
So, am I a troll just because I learned to like OSX and Linux better than of Windows? Please…
Edited 2006-06-10 01:57
I was running Win98 on my P100
Fatal flaw, P100 is actualy early 94
If you want the same year comparission do try running OSX on Apple Quadra 950 or anything on this timeline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Quadra
Do this and I’ll buy you MacBook Pro, honestly, I’m not lying.
http://www.answers.com/topic/pentium
http://www.answers.com/topic/pentium-ii
http://www.answers.com/topic/pentium-iii
For your information G3 was introduced in 98
So, am I a troll just because I learned to like OSX and Linux better than of Windows? Please…
No, you’re not because of that. I can only say about my self I’m a die hard Linux fan.
But, I don’t spew non-sense. Years don’t match with your claims, this is why you are trolling.
At least do a fair comparission.
Edited 2006-06-10 02:18
So basically if I bought a Mac that came with OSX 10.0-10.2 I have to pay Apple $100 if I want to continue getting security updates.
In what way is that in any way better than what microsoft is doing?
In what way is that in any way better than what microsoft is doing?
5 * $100 = $500 (5 Mac version *upgrades*)
1 * $500 = $500 (stays forever XP prof,only gets older)
So i would rather prefer to buy yearly upgrades (new features and other improvements) instead of waiting 5++ years on something god knows what is is eventually.
Where are you buying your upgrades to XP? They don’t cost anywhere near $500.
Where are you buying your upgrades to XP? They don’t cost anywhere near $500.
That’s the point, you can’t buy them.You just have to wait until 5++ years after what’s in the cooker.In the meantime only bugfixes are released.Their release time is way to long,the line of command to bloated.
Edited 2006-06-10 17:12
That’s the point, you can’t buy them.
You get Service Packs for free instead.
Win XP is not the same product as Win XP SP2 for example.
Win XP is not the same product as Win XP SP2 for example.
That’s true.Nonetheless i see Vista as SP2:”A annually upgrade a la Mac 10.(n)–>10.(n+1) version hop”.The major difference is it took MS more than 5 years and they still haven’t finished the job.
In short i agree with another poster that MS’s release has some shortcommings to say the least.How often has SP2 been postponed?How long did it take them to develop?
While there where a lot of problems MS still launched new projects.Why not decently finish what’s currently running?
Is it picking at MS?
On the contrary,MS just makes such an easy target.
With considerable underlying architectural changes done in Vista, I’m delaying judgment on it. We already know that part of the delay also comes from changes in their development process, results from which we have yet to see the full of.
Why not decently finish what’s currently running?
Could be because of things they already admitted, which led up to the development process changes.
Whatever the reasons are for the delays, I’m going to wait until after the first SP for Vista before laying down judgment.
I’ll use the beta 2, and RC1, and the RTM version for checking things out, but I don’t expect it to be usable before SP1. For comparison, it took until XP SP2 before I switched to XP from 2000.
Whatever the reasons are for the delays, I’m going to wait until after the first SP for Vista before laying down judgment.
I’ll use the beta 2, and RC1, and the RTM version for checking things out, but I don’t expect it to be usable before SP1. For comparison, it took until XP SP2 before I switched to XP from 2000.
I for one am not worried about the delays (I’m not even a PC user), but I think the concern is the genereal regression in quality; quite frankly, Windows 2000 was probably Microsofts highpoint in regards to its product quality, in the several years I was using it, it was a stable, reliable system, superior to Windows XP in almost every facit.
When Windows XP came out, it seemed like a step backwards in quality, the compromises that were made for the sake of backwards compatibility, the terrible GUI when the classic GUI was actually doing quite a spiffy job already, the lack of movement forward to force third party software vendors into accepting good programming practices which allowed win32 applications to run seemlessly in a restricted user mode.
Microsoft *does* have the muscle to force through these changes; if Microsoft said, 5 years ago that all applications must work, out of the box, in restricted user mode and NO compromises and backwards compatibility will be provided for lazy software vendors, I can assure you, software companies would update their software in a timely fashion.
I can run XP on a system from 98 no problem, anything over 1 350 will run it just fine, 512M of ram makes a fine websurfing and document editing machine
So if I have a Mac that came with 10.2, 10.1 or 10.0 and it has a security bug, I’m SOL. Sucks. I’ll stick with Linux where the upgrade path is free. Apple is just as guilty as MS here, they both don’t support their older products, and neither really are amazing at supporting their current products either.
People in this thread are totally missing the point. Microsoft’s supported software is too bloated to run on older machines, and their unsupported software is dangerous to use.
Yeah, OS 9 et al aren’t supported by Apple, despite being fairly recent, but they don’t need to be, because there aren’t any viruses or exploits to patch up. When It Just Works, updates are rarely critical. If you have a Mac that’s too old to run the latest OS, which is really quite old, you can still comfortably use whatever did run on it with whatever software was available at the time. You can actually connect yesterday’s software to today’s networks and not get this problem. Or just grab Linux.
I’d also like to point out that the whole “DOS came before the Internet” line of excuses is just lame. Mac OS didn’t have multiuser support until OS9. It didn’t even have a TCP/IP stack until 7 (or was it 8?), and it didn’t have any of these problems. Microsoft isn’t a victim of circumstance. They’re just breathtakingly bad at security.
The Windows/PC upgrade cycle is very infuriating for those of us who aren’t willing to put most or all of their computer budget into playing catch-up to some imaginary secure, stable, fast, and up-to-date Windows PC.
People in this thread are totally missing the point. Microsoft’s supported software is too bloated to run on older machines, and their unsupported software is dangerous to use.
“People” may be totally missing the point, but you are responding to the statement “I guess you’re saying that it’s because you have old hardware that runs newer versions of OSX and Ubuntu?” which was meant to highlight the first part of it.
Microsoft isn’t a victim of circumstance. They’re just breathtakingly bad at security.
I was doing OS development at NASA when the first internet worm hit. It wasn’t even the first large scale “virus”, as they’d been happening off and on in large networks for years at that point.
Based on that experience, and having used Microsoft products since the late 1970s, as well as having done serious Un*x OS development and embedded OS development over those years, I disagree with the assessment that they are “breathtakingly bad”.
They are bad, but not particularly worse than other companies. They appear worse because of the monoculture aspect of the PC landscape. A security breach that hits Microsoft systems will impact 50 times more systems than one that hits Macs.
The Windows/PC upgrade cycle is very infuriating for those of us who aren’t willing to put most or all of their computer budget into playing catch-up to some imaginary secure, stable, fast, and up-to-date Windows PC.
Strawman. No one supports their OSes for more than five years. Apple charges for upgrades and drops support in even less time.
Actually XP runs much better on my 800Mhz/256M HP laptop than Ubuntu. Being a zealot (and not willing to subside MS with my money) makes me stick with the former, though.
If an OS still does what you need it to do then why should it be replaced? That’s like saying it is time to get a new car because the old one has 100K on it and is outdated. I know a number of people who are well served by 98 and the only people who would benefit by them getting a new system with XP on it are MS and the hardware vendors. It would not significantly change what or how they use their computers.
As an example, I have an old laptop running 98. It wouldn’t run XP so I would have to replace it. But since it does what I got it for in the first place just as nicely, albeit not as quickly, as a new machine with XP would, it would be ridiculous to replace it. Speed is not essential and the system does not connect to the internet. So why waste the money?
Don’t waste the money. Keep windows 98 on it and use it as before. If you are security concious, tell your internet router to block the weak port, or download a free s/w firewall to do the same thing. Problem solved.
Everyone except 200 mln. users.
I know it’s already been stated that millions of users still use Win9x. It’s important to look at some of the reasons why that is the case:
1) Cost — It is fine to say, “A new computer with XP can be bought for only $300”, but I know many people to whom that is not a feasible amount…most of them being on a fixed-income. Three-hundred dollars is only a great price if you have the means to pay that much, or have a credit card. I do a lot of computer installs on older hardware for seniors & those on some sort of disability, and it is easy enought to get really inexpensive AND legit copies of any of the Win9x family to put on those computers. With work (stripping out IE etc…) they can even be made to run not only quickly, but stably. For the few things that these people need them for the Win9x is ideal.
2) Quality — Most cheap computers come with XP Home not XP Pro…I have no desire to start a flamefest, but I feel that have to state my opinion of XP Home…utter garbage. There are many experiences I’ve had w/XP Home and none of them has been positive. XP Pro is almost like a different animal. I know people will ask,’Why?’ or ‘Can you back that up?’, but I have no desire to spend a lot of time on the subject, and as I stated…it’s my opinion, nothing more, so I have no need to justify myself.
3) Alternatives — For myself, I use/play around with ~14 different OSes. When one of the people I’m putting a computer together for is comfortable with the idea, I install a BSD or Linux. Everyone I install for gets tutorials on how to use a computer anyways, so many don’t care what OS goes on it. If the machine does what they want and MAY want, they’re tickled pink, but if they want Windows and cost is an issue (see point #1), then it’s usually a Win9x. Fear of anything other than Windows is usually a factor in this last group of people, so alternative OSes are not a choice, and cost prevents them from going to the newer Windows offerings.
There are valid reasons for staying with this old tech.
Just my 2¢
People actualy buy OS from a company that can’t even fix their own code? Really pathetic. Does that mean customers can get their money back? The product is broken, so…
No, if you read a Microsoft EULA, it does not matter how badly borked the software is, and how much damage it causes to your system. It was YOUR fault for installing it. Not Microsofts, and it was YOUR fault for not testing it enough in the first place.
Microsoft will not give you a refund, as you did not “buy” the thing in the first place, you only bought a license to use the software.
Can you get support on a Linux product that is 8 years old?
Shoot, how about 4 years old?
No, you just download newest version 4 free
Can you get support on a Linux product that is 8 years old?
You can pay an indepent developer and make any bug fixed whenever you want in Linux (and free software in general).
That’s the reason why the sources are there.
And how much do you think thatll cost? I can promise you it will likely be more than any version of Windows.
I’m using linux only for a year now but afaik 2.4 kernel still gets updates (not sure how old it is though). But at least you can install new kernel, so in a way, you can.
>People actualy buy OS from a company that can’t even
>fix their own code? Really pathetic. Does that mean
>customers can get their money back? The product is
>broken, so…
If they fix it and crap gets broken then what? What is really pathetic is you are complaining about it. What a jacka$$.
Sure, every piece of software on the planet has flaws…
but, do you think a company with a chairman worth uh, 50 Billion Dollars has an excuse when a MAJOR flaw is discovered, and they act like their product(s) are still the SH*T….
Seriously, I dont think they should not waste time on OLD, out-dated software, and FOCUS on Vista…
I mean, they have 98%+ of the market, they have no reason to rush….
Didnt Mozilla also say the same thing? I am quoting from the news article posted at msfn that they also have the same flaw and that they are not going to fix it as well.
I’m confused. Microsoft found a bug that requires a complex fix. In an operating system they’re going to stop supporting altogether next month anyway.
No company would bother to fix such a bug.
True, but whilst the bug doesn’t matter, your public image does.
They shouldnt waste time or money worrying about OLD software, when the new stuff in beta form has major problems…..
You guys are still bitching because it’s Microsoft.
But the reality is that Microsoft is the best at supporting old products. 10 damn years + almost full backward compatibility since Windows 3.x! WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?
Those of you who mentionned OSX and Ubuntu: HYPOCRITS!!! Apple don’t bother supporting old products. They act like pre-OSX OSes NEVER EXISTED! And Ubuntu… YEAH RIGHT. They just released a so-called LTS version. How much time? 5 years. MICROSOFT SUPPORTED WINDOWS 98 FOR 10 YEARS.
There’s no reason to use a 10 years old OS. People should have upgraded to at least XP 3 years ago. I can’t believe people still using 98. Old hardware? THROW IT IN THE GARBAGE. You know, I had a p166 MMX here with 32mb of ram. It couldnt handle Slackware10 + Apache + PHP. I tried running MySQL for fun. LOL. PHPMyAdmin timed out most of the time.
I repeat: there’s no reason to still use Windows 98. Well, at least on the net. I believe some people could still have it around for old games. I dont know…
We are biching because we care for our computer’s security.
Full backward compatibily? You must be jocking… We can hardly run old DOS games on any recent Microsoft OS. In Linux I can run virtually any software, as older as it can get. Also in OSX I can run almost any app designed since 1997. Did you know you can run OS9 for free on any PowerPC version of OSX? I would love to run Win98 inside WinXP for free…
Apple supports OSX 10.3 on any G3 Mac except the beige. The first G3 was the iMac 233 released in 1998. My iMac is running 10.3 (released in 2004). Try running WinXP on a 1998 PC…
What are you talking about? Ubuntu is free. When support for 6.06 is over, you can upgrade for free.
Also Windows 98 was released in 1999. How can you tell us Microsoft supported it for 10 years?? We are still in 2006 you know…
Again Microsoft shouldn’t decide when its time to trash my PC. If I can run a decent, modern, robust and secure OS like Linux or OSX on my old PC or Mac, why would I send my PC/Mac to the garbage? I’m not, I just cleaned Win98 from my hard drive and installed Linux.
Windows is getting bloated with every new release, while Linux and OSX seem to be running faster and faster with better support.
Boo hoo, you can’t run DOS games..
Why would ANYONE want to Run Windows98..it’s a horrible OS. Any application has read/write access to kernel memory. Let’s kill it off MS, I propose we stop supporting anything Pre Win2k
This is rediculous, Microsoft is one of the biggest names in backwards compatability and they dont make one patch for one of their OLDEST software and you guys bitch..
I bet if this article said “Microsoft should drop Windows 98..” you all would go “OH YEA THEY SHOULD MOVE ON LINUX DOES IT XX WAY AND MACOSX DOES IT XXX WAY”
Find something else to complain about, jeez.
Why would ANYONE want to Run Windows98
Because I paid for it.
it’s a horrible OS.
So’s XP. The only difference between us is I’m saying it now, and you won’t admit it until MS drops support for it.
I repeat, the problem is not that the newest versions of Windows are unable to run older software, though that does come up quite a bit. The problem is that you can’t run any Windows software without up-to-date hardware (at least not with any acceptable degree of speed and security). And why wouldn’t I just get up-to-date hardware, I can practically hear you ask? Because I’ve already invested in this platform. I shouldn’t have to keep throwing money in the fire just to get the same product year after year. Windows 98 should have been secure out of the box, and it certainly should have been secure after 7 years of patching.
Even Microsoft is stuck in its own upgrade cycle. I netcrafted microsoft.com out of curiosity, and none of their Windows servers is pre-2k3. Of course, the software upgrade was free for them, but it doesn’t speak well of their confidence in anything less recent. Look at sun.com, on the other hand, and you’ve got lots of services on Solaris 8.
Even if a Microsoft product’s official term of support is exceptionally long, its useful life is extraordinarily short, and the next upgrade will require much more powerful hardware.
Even Microsoft is stuck in its own upgrade cycle. I netcrafted microsoft.com out of curiosity, and none of their Windows servers is pre-2k3. Of course, the software upgrade was free for them, but it doesn’t speak well of their confidence in anything less recent.
They do that on purpose, its called ‘eating your own dog food’ and its been highly publized by MS in the past.
On the flip side if they run lots of their services on windows 2000 then they put off the perception that they don’t trust their production systems to the new software.
I guess they can’t win with some people regardless.
Even if a Microsoft product’s official term of support is exceptionally long, its useful life is extraordinarily short, and the next upgrade will require much more powerful hardware.
Depends on how you look at it. I have NT4 systems that still perform well and I leave them alone to do the tasks I’ve set them up to do. There is nothing wrong with that and I have no reason to upgrade them at this time. If you are on an upgrade wagon its either because you *need* the new hardware due to what you want out of your computing platform or you just want to be on the latest and greatest for the hell of it. Yes you’ll need new hardware in many cases.
They do that on purpose, its called ‘eating your own dog food’ and its been highly publized by MS in the past.
Look at the results, though.
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=microsoft.com&position=limited&…..
I originally checked their domain hoping for some juicy irony, like all their servers running Linux and FreeBSD. A couple run Linux, but most run Windows, which is respectable in the dog food sense you brought up. The problem is that every Windows server is the most recent version, 2k3. Most would be just great, but every single one of them? To me, this calls into question the value of investing in current Microsoft products if the older ones are so useless to their own creator.
Here’s Sun.com for comparison:
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=sun.com&position=limited&lookup…..
They run absolutely nothing that isn’t their own (no Linux, no BSD, no MS), even avoiding Apache much of the time in favor of their own system. Most importantly, though, they run some big, important stuff on a pretty old version of their OS. That looks more like a long-term investment to me.
I have NT4 systems that still perform well and I leave them alone to do the tasks I’ve set them up to do. There is nothing wrong with that and I have no reason to upgrade them at this time.
Old operating systems are very useful. I totally think so. But if they’re going to be left with such gaping holes in them, a lot of that use goes away because you can’t connect them to the Internet.
I’ll sum up pretty much my whole position here: Security should never be a reason to upgrade. Patches and updates, sure, everyone makes mistakes. But buying a whole new ship because the last one sank? I’m not convinced.
Look at the results, though.
I originally checked their domain hoping for some juicy irony, like all their servers running Linux and FreeBSD. A couple run Linux, but most run Windows, which is respectable in the dog food sense you brought up. The problem is that every Windows server is the most recent version, 2k3. Most would be just great, but every single one of them? To me, this calls into question the value of investing in current Microsoft products if the older ones are so useless to their own creator.
I don’t see a problem with them running windows 2003 on everything. We have few Windows 2000 servers left at my work, in fact beyond a few file servers everything is windows 2003 or some form of unix.
I always figure companies run their latest because that is what they are trying to sell.
I’ll sum up pretty much my whole position here: Security should never be a reason to upgrade. Patches and updates, sure, everyone makes mistakes. But buying a whole new ship because the last one sank? I’m not convinced.
I feel that security can be a reason to upgrade in cases where you have new security requirements that demand newer software.
I do agree that buying a new OS just because the last one was so full of holes it looked like cheese should not be a reason to upgrade.
Full backward compatibily? You must be jocking… We can hardly run old DOS games on any recent Microsoft OS. In Linux I can run virtually any software, as older as it can get.
As long as you have the source, a compatible glibc and possibly an older version of gcc… Success is definitely not assured with a dynamically-linked binary.
I would love to run Win98 inside WinXP for free…
Most Win98-era apps will work in WinXP, just like most OS9 apps will work in OSX.
Also Windows 98 was released in 1999. How can you tell us Microsoft supported it for 10 years?? We are still in 2006 you know…
It was released in mid-1998. However, it was pretty much an update of Win95, which was released in 1995.
I’d like to add that Apple dropped support for OS X 10.2, which was released not even four years ago.
I have a dislike for Microsoft and their products but let’s be fair.
Most Win98-era apps will work in WinXP, just like most OS9 apps will work in OSX.
I’m not talking about Win98 apps, I’m talking about DOS apps. Win98 was the last OS from Microsoft that could run any stuff I had on DOS.
It was released in mid-1998
True, sorry for that. Still doesn’t make 10 years…
I’d like to add that Apple dropped support for OS X 10.2, which was released not even four years ago.
Again the same question. Why would Apple support 10.2 if 10.3 is actually better and faster on older hardware? You can run 10.3 on any G3 Mac except the beige.
So get DOSBox. Geez. Why should Microsoft have to support 20-year-old software when Linux gets to break binary compatibility every six months? OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but still. Give them a break.
We are biching because we care for our computer’s security.
If you are running windows 98 you do not care about security. It was never on your radar to begin with.
Full backward compatibily? You must be jocking… We can hardly run old DOS games on any recent Microsoft OS. In Linux I can run virtually any software, as older as it can get. Also in OSX I can run almost any app designed since 1997.
Dude listen to yourself. You are complaining that you can’t run DOS games from the late 80s to early 90s but you can run software on OS X from 1997 ? What kind of comparison is THAT?
What can you run on XP from 97? Almost everything with the exception of maybe security software that sp2 causes to break.
Did you know you can run OS9 for free on any PowerPC version of OSX? I would love to run Win98 inside WinXP for free…
Well then download an HD image of Win98 and get VMWare’s free player. All of this is floating around on the web and you don’t even need the original install CDs.
Apple supports OSX 10.3 on any G3 Mac except the beige. The first G3 was the iMac 233 released in 1998. My iMac is running 10.3 (released in 2004). Try running WinXP on a 1998 PC…
Currently doing it and it runs surprisingly well for such old hardware.
What are you talking about? Ubuntu is free. When support for 6.06 is over, you can upgrade for free.
He is talking about support for old operating systems, which is what the entire thread is about. Where have you been?
Again Microsoft shouldn’t decide when its time to trash my PC. If I can run a decent, modern, robust and secure OS like Linux or OSX on my old PC or Mac, why would I send my PC/Mac to the garbage? I’m not, I just cleaned Win98 from my hard drive and installed Linux.
Agreed. Linux is a great option for old hardware. OS X ? Can’t say I agree. Apple drops support within 2-3 years max.
Windows is getting bloated with every new release, while Linux and OSX seem to be running faster and faster with better support.
Actually with the development of gnome and KDE most GNU/linux distros are becoming bloated also. OS X has done great but apple will be dropping PPC support soon so enjoy the hardware that has no upgrade path from apple soon.
First, Windows 98 was rls’ed on June 25, 1998.
Second, XP has a compatibility mode that works really good. Most DOS games runs perfectly with it. The games that doesnt run under the compatibility mode are really old or used some old hardware hacks (x86 memory hacks, video memory hacks, etc). Hacks that arent emulated by the compatibility mode.
Third, why would you run Win98 under XP? Microsoft included Win98 compatibility directly in XP. No need to run the old OS over the new one. Apple did it because it was the easiest way to go.
Fourth, let’s talk about Apple. I dont wanna know how fast OSX is on your G3. Tell me how fast Photoshop is on your x86-based Mac under Rosetta. ROFL. I know some people that started using PC for that kind of stuff because they know it will take forever to compagnies like Adobe to fully support x86 based Macs. Why would they anyway, it’s Apple’s problem, not their.
Oh finally: Linux. I know it’s free. But I’m talking about “support”. In 5 years from now, it will be pain in the *** to maintain Ubuntu 6.06 by hand, no? And I completely understand why they wont care patching it anymore because it will be old and phased out, just like Windows 98. I use Ubuntu myself, by the way.
You don’t have to agree with me, but you don’t need to be childish. I can act childish too… lets see:
First, Windows 98 was rls’ed on June 25, 1998
Yes, it was a typo. Anyway 2006-1998=8 years , not 10.
Second, XP has a compatibility mode that works really good.
Not it doesn’t. I use XP myself, by the way.
I dont wanna know how fast OSX is on your G3. Tell me how fast Photoshop is on your x86-based Mac under Rosetta.
I don’t wanna know how fast Photoshop on a x86. But would like you to run Photoshop on WinXP running on a P266 against Photoshop running on OSX 10.3 on a PPC233. ‘ROFL’ for you too.
Oh finally: Linux. I know it’s free. But I’m talking about “support”. In 5 years from now, it will be pain in the *** to maintain Ubuntu 6.06 by hand, no?
Update Manager. Click ‘Update’ and voila, Ubuntu ‘7.07’ is there.
or
Insert ‘7.07’ CD. Click ‘Upgrade’ and voila, Ubuntu ‘7.07’ is there.
No money lost, no old PC in the garbage.
I use Ubuntu too.
I use Ubuntu too…
that is actually a good slogan, pass it on to Ubuntu themselves.
Anyway, I use Ubuntu too, and one of the ways I like to do it is in the old Debian style;
open a terminal
type
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Done…..
Windows users think this is akin to running Windows Update, none of them can grasp the fact that it is the equivilent of going from Windows 3.11 or Win95 right up to the latest version of XP with SP2, with just one command, and maybe one reboot if the kernel was upgraded.
AND….
All for free
So you upgrade instead.
Just like people still running Windows 98 should have done years ago.
Full backward compatibily? You must be jocking… We can hardly run old DOS games on any recent Microsoft OS. In Linux I can run virtually any software, as older as it can get.
You must be delusional, or on crack, if you think linux is better than XP for running old 16-bit apps. Your perception of reality is somewhat distorted.
Please don’t joke. You can’t run 3 year old software on some distroes even if it was compiled on the same distro. And you can’t run 1 week old binaries on older linuxes because the latest libc version isn’t there. This is actualy a big bad gnu lamery problem.
The point is, linux has one of the worst abi and compatibility situations of all OSes out there and NO forward compatibility at all.
So please, give credit where it’s due. MS is greatest compatibility company/group out there. I can still compile stuff on latest xp and run it on 95. Try this with linux, you’ll fail even with months difference.
Not everybody has the disposable income you might. In fact, most people’s computing needs probably haven’t changed that much in the past 7 (not 10, as you claim) years. How much hardware pizazz do you need to putter around the web, exchange email and write the occasional document?
I can still run Slackware/XFCE on my 7 year old 586.In fact, it’s faster than Win95 on the same hardware. Who are you to dictate that, because some companies can’t turn out quality products, I should throw a perfectly good office workstation in the dumpster? Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
I decide when I throw out my PC. Not Microsoft.
Microsoft is a corporation. They are in the business of making money. (Well, MS Research is in the business of coming up with cool ideas, but we’ll leave that aside). Microsoft’s customers are uniformly people with money.
Companies offer long-term support on their products because of people with money — specifically, business owners and IT departments. (Businesses can’t use products without support, period. If you or I can’t get a game working, tough. If a business has a problem with their email system, it might affect hundreds of computers and prevent anything from getting done until it’s fixed.) If you are considering buying a computer with Windows, Microsoft wants you to know that you will have at least five years before you have to upgrade, which is long enough for almost every IT upgrade cycle.
I don’t understand why everyone’s saying “look at Linux” as if that were a counterexample. Who supports Linux software past five years? The kernel guys have a maintenance-mode tree in addition to the current stable and development trees. Most distributions let you download old versions, but the only updates they give are security updates, and even then they’ll only do it by putting in new versions of the appropriate packages — meaning that if you don’t want to upgrade to a new version of Xorg, say, you’re out of luck.
It is true that you can put many modern Linux distros on very old hardware and they will still run fine. But notice how you’re using a new version of the software. The Linux kernel has only gotten faster since 5 years ago, and modern distros are slow mostly because of other packages which can be turned off. But still, you’re not using Slackware 4.0, nor would you expect Pat to maintain such an old version.
The difference is really just that Microsoft only cares about people who buy computers (well, software, but we’ll use computers as a proxy). New versions of Windows are featureful at the expense of being fast because 95% of people who buy a new version of Windows are also buying a new computer which is fast enough to negate the OS’s bloat. The people who buy this OS much prefer having these features and paying the very small performance penalty.
On the other hand, there is nothing Microsoft could do to get you to give them money. You want them to fix their 8-year-old OS so you can keep using it for free. Microsoft doesn’t take your interests into account because you aren’t helping its bottom line in any way. As far as MS is concerned, you might as well use Linux.
It should be pretty obvious why Linux distros have different aims. For one, they’re free. For community distros, this is it. Pat makes Slackware because he wanted a good distro, and then he decided to share it with everyone else. “Everyone else” will include a number of people who don’t spend money on either hardware or software, and so people ask for, and get, a product that works on their old computers.
So, yes. You decide when you throw out your PC, not Microsoft. But you can’t honestly expect a for-profit corporation to spend time and money on software which they don’t sell and which no one important uses, just so that a few people won’t switch to Linux.
But you can’t honestly expect a for-profit corporation to spend time and money on software which they don’t sell and which no one important uses, just so that a few people won’t switch to Linux.
I can damn well expect the vendor not to include anything that’s calling home:
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+ease+up+on+piracy+check-ins/2100-7…
To me this is plain and simple spyware.
You should expect that, but you can’t, really, when EULAs have gotten so crazy here. (In Germany, for example, it’s illegal for an OEM copy of Windows to be not-for-resale… try pulling that in the US.) Our only hope is that people keep calling MS on stuff like this until enough people say “There should be a law”, and then they make one.
Just because Microsoft doesn’t want to patch a security hole in a 7-10 year old piece of software doesn’t mean that they are forcing you to upgrade all the hardware in your house / office. If you’ve been using windows 98 happily since 1998, no one is going to stop you now. Just don’t expect it to be quite as secure as a modern OS.
My web stats show slightly more than 3 % Win 9X. It really is time to get rid of this monstrosity.
From the article:
Microsoft recommends that people who still use the older operating systems protect their PCs by using a network firewall that filters traffic on TCP Port 139. “Such a firewall will block attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability from outside of the firewall,” it said.
Anyone running a Windows 98 computer with port 139 open to the world is an idiot and deserves to have their computer owned.
This seems much ado about nothing.
So if they suddenly find out my 10 year old car catches fire because of a flaw from the factory, I get a recall notice.
A flaw in a 10 year old Operating system that could allow hackers in, gets brushed off? Hmmmm.
2 words people, forced upgrade. Period.
Edited 2006-06-10 01:14
I’m glad they are forcing people to leave Win98..
Windows 98 is just too old for them to care anymore, maybe if it had a more substatial userbase..but just no.
You are GLAD they are FORCING people to………
Did you just read what you wrote ?
Grow up young man.
So you’d like to use an OS which has more bugs than a user knows what to do with?
Windows 98 is horrible by design. If you use it then I’m sorry.
By the way, it’s not like they’re locking the gates on Win98..they just posted the port you can close a viola the problem is fixed.
You guys are exaggerating this greatly.
Personally though, if you’re using Windows98 you obviously don’t care about security/user experience so stop crying.
Let’s see here…
What is the expected “lifetime” of a car? I’d say at least 20 years. More with proper service of mechanical parts.
What is the expected “lifetime” of an operating system? It sure as hell isn’t 8-10 years.
And if we add cost of car vs cost of OS into it all, the cost of the OS is small change in comparison.
Making analogies between cars and operating systems shows that you are nothing but a little troll looking for food.
1) Operating systems are digital information. Their life is infinite. There’s no comparison to a car mechanically breaking down.
2) Cars are the de facto analogy for computers. Apparently, everyone who talks about technology is a little troll looking for food.
3) The analogy that “little troll” was making was that in both cases, a dangerous flaw existed in the product from the beginning, but only one of the manufacturers took responsibility for it.
1) …
2) Cars are not, and has never been, a useful analogy for computers.
3) A dangerous flaw in a car that threatens lives, that you can’t fix on your own, or even protect against… vs. a “dangerous” flaw in an old OS that wasn’t even designed for network usage to begin with, that you can easily protect against by applying common sense… Gee. That’s a great analogy.
I suppose we should make MicroSoft make patches for Win98 to “fix” issues like it being a single-user operating system, etc. as well.
Most people don’t pay 10-50,000 dollars on an OS
Full backward compatibily? You must be jocking… We can hardly run old DOS games on any recent Microsoft OS. In Linux I can run virtually any software, as older as it can get. Also in OSX I can run almost any app designed since 1997.
Dude listen to yourself. You are complaining that you can’t run DOS games from the late 80s to early 90s but you can run software on OS X from 1997 ? What kind of comparison is THAT?
HAHA. Most Mac users are complete troll. They think Apple is the greatest sh*t ever. Let’s talk about Apple’s market share…
Windows and Linux are decent OS. Mac is not.
i have win98se on a seperate hd( an 8 gig) on my Dapper box. The last time I booted into it was about a month ago for an intro computer class( i needed the creds) it said i hadn’t run scandisk in 1343 days. I’m not going to worry about it because the chances are, I wont boot into it again for another 1300 days. But I’m not bitter. If it weren’t for win98se,( and Litestep) I would have never tried linux. Now.. since trying, Mandrake, Redhat, Fedora, Slackware( loved slack) I’m totally happy running Ubuntu. Thanks Bill. I couldn’t have done it without you. As for the security hole.. I could give 2 squirts.
This is one of the reasons why I switched to a Mac and why I’m replacing Windows to Linux on my older machines.
oh wait, OS 7 is no longer supported by Apple and neither is Linux 0.01.
oh shoot!
Who cares? I use Linux!!!
… let’s be fair here.
W98 (which I actually happened to like) is almost 8 years old. It’s lacking a lot of features that a modern OS is assumed to have.
I’m pleasantly surprised that MS has supported it as long as they have and it’s one thing I actually give them a nod of respect for.
—
And as an aside, I’ve run (and been happy with) the performance of OS 10.3 on an iMac 350/320.
…they discover that vulnerabiity … NOW. after so many years??
What I dont get is why people are so hell bent on bashing MS. Am I missing something or didnt Mozilla also report the same flaw to be present in their software as well? And isnt it equally disturbing that a 3rd party vendor discovered it and no the authors of the software?
yes, but Mozilla vowed to fix theirs.
The people who take issues with Microsoft’s decision not to fix this but should give MS a break. Win 98 (say SE) has been supported since ’99. No version of OS has been patched for as long.
Even open source software has not supported for as long. Does KDE 2.0 still have updated patches? How about Red Hat 6.2? And Mandrake 7.0? Red Hat doesn’t even support Red Hat 9.0 nowadays (I know b/c I have a few computers in my computer lab running it). Upgrading is not an option for those computer b/c of the numerous software we developed using the libraries from that time. We just can’t risk having things break after upgrading.
People who keep telling others to “upgrade” is just not thinking straight. It’s not about upgrading. What happens if I have a particular piece of hardware that only works with Linux kernel 2.0? I will be SOL. nowadays. So even though I dislike Microsoft’s antics with a passion I still think they can’t be faulted in this case.
On the other hand, Win 98 has been supported for so long. Even most of the MS Office versions (excpet for the upcoming one I think) supports Win 98 still.
As for those who say WinXP is useless on hardware circa ’98. I have a Celeron 366 laptop with 160MB RAM that’s chugging along with WinXP SP2 and MS Office 2000. It’s on the slow side but it’s fully functional for what my sister needs to do at school.
Give MS a break
Why,when they apparently take to much hay on their fork or are bluntly lying.I think 5++ years is quite enough “break” time.Downloaded and installed Vista beta2 yesterday.Vista couldn’t upgrade an existing XP SP2 installation (blue screen).Neither could i perform for some reason an clean install(Vista din’t find my two SATA hd’s).Ah well,gladly installed FC5.Instead of Vista my next purchage will be something with OSX.
How much break do they need?
Edited 2006-06-10 08:02
I’m not sure that MS can be criticized for not patching an 8-year-old OS, and backwards compatibility in MS products has always seemed good to me. What worries me is here in the third world about half the PCs are running 98 – ME (the other half pirate copies of XP)and if they are all compromised and being used for DOS attacks / spam servers etc it doesn’t do anyone any good.
On the other hand, even if the patch was available, they wouldn’t be patched as most are still running Dr Solomans AV or a pirate Norton that has not been up graded since 1999.
So how is the support for Red Hat 5 nowadays? They’re still patching security holes I presume? Or maybe it is a old, crappy OS that they doesn’t care about anymore and tell people to upgrade instead?
So how is the support for Red Hat 5 nowadays?
Who would run it anyway when not out of curiosity?
They’re still patching security holes I presume? Or maybe it is a old, crappy OS that they doesn’t care about anymore and tell people to upgrade instead?
Not for the system,RedHat 5.0 is a bit outdated isn’t it:)?.The apps are supported regardless.While not even half of the windows apps have free upgrades and bugfixes indefinitely,much unlike the OSS apps.
People are in an uproar as the Commodore 64 is no longer getting OS updates!
oh wait! Here is a model T owner and he is angry he is still not getting any security upgrades for his model T!
throw it away,
throw windows 98, Me, 2000 and XP away!
Use Mac OS X or Linux!
I think that security should have the top most priority. Also, it can be that they can’t fix this (like some1 said before) or this can take some time and they’re just saying so.
I feel like a nice class action lawsuit. That $125 was money thrown down the drain. I could of gone OS/2 instead and fell for Microsoft’s lies. The only way to vindicate themselves is to give me back my $125.
Because the recommended, ‘user-fix,’ is:
Microsoft recommends that people who still use the older operating systems protect their PCs by using a network firewall that filters traffic on TCP Port 139. “Such a firewall will block attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability from outside of the firewall,” it said.
A good Firewall app such as ZoneAlarm would seem to be in order.
ZoneLabs does have a free version of their firewall which will, I believe, block port 139.
My 2 cents.
No it’s not because I feel people are entitled to support for an 8-year old OS. It’s because all these PC’s are now (even more) wide open to hackers.
I don’t care about the people still running Win98, I do care they will be sending me spam when they get owned and become part of some losers botnet. MS owes it to everyone on the internet to fix problems like these.
It’s not like there isn’t a way to fix it. Close port 139 with a simple firewall. That’s it. Nothing more. It is not complicated.
So they are not fixing the bug because it would break other software… and now all the anti-MS fanboys scream and cheer… So let’s take a look how such a situation is handled in Linux: They *do* fix it, and it *does* break a lot of software. Ever wondered why the kernel has no stable ABI or even API? This is the reason.
… big surprise microsoft doesn’t want to patch their old stuff. And people really need to get a life and move away from these archaic OS’s – IT HAS BEEN A WHOLE DECADE SINCE IT HAS BEEN RELEASED AND MAYBE ANOTHER DECADE SINCE THEY STARTED WORKING ON IT – HELLO!!! IT’S 2006. Does Apple, the greatest computer maker in the world that everybody loves still patch their old crap?
Microsoft has supported this thing for 8 years, and in 8 years, they couldn’t find and patch a hijack exploit based on a simple open port? This does not deserve credit.
It’s not normal to need a firewall. It’s a good idea, but actually needing one for basic security is purely a Windows phenomenon. And the people who are using Windows 98 are doing so because it’s what they have, and people who just use what they have lack the interest or knowledge in computers to upgrade, and certainly to use a firewall. Microsoft deserves “a break” for doing nothing about this, but people who don’t have firewalls should be shot out of a cannon? It’s an unreasonable expectation for the users stuck with these products to be responsible for patching Microsoft’s security holes.
Old versions of FOSS projects (i.e. Linux) do stop getting attention after a while, but with most of them, a bug this critical in even an extremely outdated version would produce a response, and then a patch, from the maintainers. Also, if you can’t afford to change your setup for whatever reason, leaving Linux unpatched at any stage is almost invariably going to be more secure than even a relatively up-to-date Windows system, at least if history is any lesson. Also, upgrading the software is free. Free as in beer, free as in speech, free as in free of bloat. You can do a lot more upgrading with Linux without spending a dime, on hardware or software. Better yet, you can do a lot less upgrading if that’s what you want.
Apple aggressively updates their software products, often breaking compatibility, but, again, if you need a static setup, you can have it, because it’s already secure. Losing support means no shiny, new features. It doesn’t mean being thrown to the sharks. New versions of their operating system are expensive and come out frequently, but offer tangible improvements and usually run equally well or better on the same hardware the previous version did, keeping the total cost of upgrading down.
The MS/PC upgrade cycle is famously bad for a reason. I hope I’ve helped make that reason clear.
Buy Windows XP and when Vista comes buy that too
Y’know i have a windows 98 machine (p3 800 )and a
2.5 ghz xp job, both are very quick. On either comp
dont use internet/EX 4,5,or6 and you wont have any
problems i hear 7IE is much better but it has been
better for me to use opera or firefox.
Arguments – But No Solutions
You folks seem real good at arguments, got any solutions?
These guys do:
http://exuberant.ms11.net/index.html
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html
http://exuberant.ms11.net/links.html
http://www.oldversion.com/
http://www.quesa.org/index.html
Try being helpful, this place is turning into something resembling a girl fight.
hylas
>I feel like a nice class action lawsuit. That $125
>was money thrown down the drain. I could of gone
>OS/2 instead and fell for Microsoft’s lies. The only
>way to vindicate themselves is to give me back my
>$125.
Go for it. Sue Microsoft. I bet you lose every single appeal. See, the problem is that people like you lack common sense.
Windows 98 is a very old OS based on MSDOS which is thirty years old. Microsoft is doing a favor so that you can get to a better OS that just works. Nothing lasts forever, but Vista is a huge deal.
I lack common sense? MS sold me a secure OS in 1998. It says so right there when I install it. Don’t believe me, go throw a Win98 installation together and watch the pictures in the background as it installs. Security was its selling point.
My main machine runs XP for compatibility reasons with work. Otherwise I’d probably of stuck with a linux distro for no other reason than its free and it does everything I need.
I’ve already got a better OS than Win98 running on a seven year old p2-based machine, its called SuSE 10.1 Linux. It probably originally had NT 4.0 on it, but when I got it second hand it came with 98. I was pretty excited to have something free that was even that powerful just so I could wipe its MS-based OS out for another Linux machine.
I’ve found that on old machines like my nicely aged P120 laptop, Win98 is more than acceptable for web browsing – especially for the kids when we take family trips. It supports wireless and ethernet, which comes to just about every hotel room in America anymore. The kids also seem to like the older DOS and Windows compatible games more than what comes with the basic linux distros. So for them Win98 is still good enough. Otherwise I personally really have no use for it.