Should Windows 98/ME still be supported by hardware and software manufacturers?

[Link19]

I thought this would be an interesting question to ask to see what you all think of which opertaing systems should still be supported and which should be ditched all together. I think supporting Windows 98/ME should be stopped all together by now as those opertaing systems were so bad to begin with. In fact, WIN 98/ME support should have been ditched a year ago if you ask me. It should be Windows 2000/XP only by now when it comes to Microsoft operating systems. Windows 98/ME were worthless pieces of trash operating systems as they weren't even real 32-bit code and constantly crashed all the time when ever doing anything even the slightest bit memory intensive. I can't believe how many hardware vendors still support those pieces of trash OS's. I mean just look at NVIDIA as an example. I mean who the heck would buy an awesome state of the art GeForce 6800 video card for a high end gaming PC that uses a crappy piece of junk OS in WIN 98/ME. And yet, NVIDIA provides drivers for Windows 9X/ME that support the GeForce 6800 chipset?? Just ridiculous if you ask me. I mean having to support WIN 98/ME for all this time was probably a pain in the technical perspective, but a few years ago, you had no choice as those were the most dominating operating systems. But think about it now, with Windows XP having been out for almost 3 years, do you actually think support for junk OSs like them is necessary in todays world? I mean Windows 95/98/ME are the laughing stock out of all 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking operating systems. Let me know your thoughts on this. I'm interested to see what you all think.

 

[Psych]

You should remember that they were OK operating systems in their heyday. People who needed computers bought it because they usually didn't have a good alternative. In fact, I still think over 10% of the Microsoft's customers use something earlier than Win2000. Everybody has tried their best to let go of these operating systems, but it would be too much to just stop supporting them. Microsoft has already stopped any work on them.

And Windows IS 32-bit. Some parts of the underlying DOS is 16-bit, but the link between Windows and the hardware was more direct in Win98/ME. I personally loathe those old operating systems to death, but they are much more compact than XP and aren't such resource hogs. Plus they run fine IF YOU TAKE CARE OF IT. (As in lock the computer in a closet and bury the closet.)

 

[bsobel]

but they are much more compact than XP and aren't such resource hogs. Plus they run fine IF YOU TAKE CARE OF IT. (As in lock the computer in a closet and bury the closet.)

Actually, once you factor in the average machine at the time vs the average machine today, you'll find that 2k/XP use about the same percentage of overall resources as the old os's (in many cases less).

Bill

 

[Link19]

Originally posted by: Psych
You should remember that they were OK operating systems in their heyday. People who needed computers bought it because they usually didn't have a good alternative. In fact, I still think over 10% of the Microsoft's customers use something earlier than Win2000. Everybody has tried their best to let go of these operating systems, but it would be too much to just stop supporting them. Microsoft has already stopped any work on them.

And Windows IS 32-bit. Some parts of the underlying DOS is 16-bit, but the link between Windows and the hardware was more direct in Win98/ME. I personally loathe those old operating systems to death, but they are much more compact than XP and aren't such resource hogs. Plus they run fine IF YOU TAKE CARE OF IT. (As in lock the computer in a closet and bury the closet.)

Arguably, they were ok operating systems in their heyday, but why did suppoort for Windows 3.1 (if I remember correctly) get ditched immediately after Windows 95 was released and went mainstream? And actually, WIN 95/98/ME weren't actually ok at their time based on what we all could have been using if it weren't for a licensing issue between Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft and IBM both worked together on a new true 32-bit operating system in OS/2. IBM had actually owned the licensing for OS/2, but Microsoft was just under contract to develope it with them. Eventually, Microsoft and IBM broke up, and Microsoft couldn't develope and sell OS/2 anymore because IBM owned the rights to the OS/2 codeline. Microsoft wanted to dominate the market and devleoped their own next generation OS that was the predecessor to Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS (Windows 95). IBM had devleoped OS/2 WARP which was by far superior from a technical perspective than Windows 95 as it was a true full 32-bit OS unlike Windows 95. But because of Microsoft's much better marketting strategy, their OS became dominant even though it was technically inferrior because they didn't own the copyright to the OS/2 code. OS/2 was a superior 32-bit OS that used system resources efficiently and ran almost all legacy DOS apps perfectly. Since Microsoft didn't own the code for OS/2, they developed their own advanced true 32-bit OS in Windows NT. However, Windows NT required massive system resources to run effectively at the time when it was released and it didn't have much if any compatibility with DOS apps and it didn't have the simplicity needed for use in the homes. So Microsoft marketed Windows NT as an OS for use in the corporate environment while they developed Windows 95 based on 16-bit MS-DOS code for home users which didn't require very many resources to run and supported DOS and legacy Windows 3.X apps perfectly. But it was based on MS-DOS code, so that is why it was so bad at multitasking and memory intensive tasks. But Microsoft had the superior marketing strategy, and their OS became dominant, despite being by far inferior from a technical standpoint to OS/2 WARP. I mean had Microsoft and IBM never broke up licensing agreements or IBM dominated the consumer desktop OS market, we would have all been running a true 32-bit multitasking ever since 1995 and would probably be running a better OS even today as the OS/2 structure was great technology. It took a while for the NT based OS Microsoft made to improve enough where PCs became fast enough and hardware/software became compatible enough for home users to finally run a real 32-bit OS on their PCs. I mean just think about that scenario. If only IBM and Microsoft never broke up.

Maybe you can't stop supporting Windows 98/ME alltogether yet, but I mean why would you support those old coded operating systems for modern robust hardware? I mean why would anyone ever construct a Pentium 4 machine with 512MB or more RAM and a GeForce 6800 video card and run Windows 98/ME as their main OS??? I mean that is just plain stupid as your computer would only run so much slower with an OS like that on such great hardware. I mean maybe you should still support Windows 98/ME for hardware and applications that require a minimum of less than a 1GHz CPU and 128MB of RAM or less, but for system specs higher than that, why bother supporting those old junky operating systems?

 

[nihl8tor88]

<<Windows 98/ME were worthless pieces of trash operating systems as they weren't even real 32-bit code and constantly crashed all the time when ever doing anything even the slightest bit memory intensive. I can't believe how many hardware vendors still support those pieces of trash OS's.>>
....
Brings this picture to my mind.

Lenny Small to Albert Einstein.
Gee, you sure gots pretty hair mister, but comb it once in a while you stupid dipshit!

 

[castun]

Once I upgraded to 2k/WinXP I loved it. I couldn't believe how much more stable they were overall. You never had Window's slowing down after being on for a while like 98 and ME did, and it never froze up either. It's nice being able to leave your computer on for months at a time without having to reboot it every few hours. XP might be more of a system hog, but with some proper pruning and care, it's pretty easy to weed out all the unnecessary crap you'll never need.

 

[oldman420]

XP rocks and is by far more enjoyable to use also pretty stable.
95 98 me and 3.1 are all much less efficient and less stable,however there many many people in other countries that use them esp old USSR countries and third world countries that still use them.
2000 is good in a business environment it's very stable and efficient.
NT 4.0 "I loved this one" fast, efficient, stable and ugly as heck.
IMHO

 

[Sunner]

No.
People with hardware so ancient it can't even run Win2K/XP just need to upgrade, or go with another OS.
Win9X has no place in 2004.

 

[THUGSROOK]

:roll:

 

[Oyeve]

MS should privide minimal Win9x support. I work for a company that has over 65,000 employees worldwide and if I exclude the macs and just focus on PCs I found that 80% of the pcs use win2k and the other 20% are a mix of XP, ME and 98. I was bored one day so I ran a asset inventory on the WAN and found all the info mentioned above out. Took a couple of days to gather all the info. And a majority of the win2k pcs only have 128 megs of ram. Slow as heck but functional.(barely).

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
:roll:

Directed at me I suppose?
Aren't you the guy that loves FAT32 by the way?

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: Sunner
Directed at me I suppose?

no, its directed at this thread.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK

Originally posted by: Sunner
Directed at me I suppose?

no, its directed at this thread.

What's wrong with this thread? Seems like a pretty decent question to me, though of course none of us will be able to affect the IHV's, but expressing an opinion never hurts.

 

[Fern]

Oh yeah? I'm with my buddy Thugs on this one. Read THIS from about 9 months ago.

The study, released this week by technology consultant AssetMetrix, found that more than 80 percent of companies still have some machines using Windows 95 or Windows 98. Of those companies still using the older operating systems, an average of 39 percent of desktops were running either Windows 95 or Windows 98.

"We found a significant occurrence of Windows 9x," said Steve O'Halloran, managing director for the research arm of AssetMetrix. The study looked at 372,129 PCs from 670 companies ranging in size from 10 to 49,000 employees.

The size of the business did not seem to dictate how prevalent the older operating systems were, with larger companies as likely as smaller ones to have a high prevalence of older operating systems. In total, Windows 95 made up 14.7 percent of operating systems, and Windows 98 made up 12.5 percent. Windows 2000 was the most common OS, running on slightly more than half of machines, while its predecessor, Windows NT4, was still used on 13.3 percent of desktops.

Windows XP, the most current version of Windows, was found on just 6.6 percent of the machines.

Win XP is not better, more stable or anything. Ive tried it, meh!

I've looked for some sorta concrete scientic study showing any such benefits,. Never found any. It ain't faster in games, that's all over the 'net. Nothing proving/demonstrating superior stabilty. Zip/zilch. Just anedotal stuff like repeated here.

If you like XP, fine, I could go on and on, but won't bother. Most of the rest of the world doesn't seem to agree that XP is great.

Maybe you guys are on to a secret (or have swallowed a bunch of M$ marketing pablum).

 

[Link19]

Win XP is not better, more stable or anything. Ive tried it, meh!

I've looked for some sorta concrete scientic study showing any such benefits,. Never found any. It ain't faster in games, that's all over the 'net. Nothing proving/demonstrating superior stabilty. Zip/zilch. Just anedotal stuff like repeated here.

If you like XP, fine, I could go on and on, but won't bother. Most of the rest of the world doesn't seem to agree that XP is great.

Maybe you guys are on to a secret (or have swallowed a bunch of M$ marketing pablum).

Windows XP is outstanding and far superior to WIndows 98/ME, but definitely not Windows 2000. If you think XP is too much of a resource hog, then go with Windows 2000 which doesn't hog many resources and still is a quality OS, and arguably the better of the two. But face it. Windows 98/ME don't even compare with Windows 2000 or Windows XP when it comes to which are quality opertaing systems and which should be left in the dust.

 

[Fern]

Windows XP is outstanding and far superior to WIndows 98/ME, but definitely not Windows 2000. If you think XP is too much of a resource hog, then go with Windows 2000 which doesn't hog many resources and still is a quality OS, and arguably the better of the two. But face it. Windows 98/ME don't even compare with Windows 2000 or Windows XP when it comes to which are quality opertaing systems and which should be left in the dust.

Got any proof other than anedotal/personal opinion stuff?

I sure as heck can't find any after hours n hours of search.

I have 6 pc's. Most of which use win98se. I don't have "stability issues". Never have.

Used ME and 98se for gaming until last month, now I'm using win2K sp4 on my primary gaming rig cuz I'm playing Doom 3. B4 that, I had a dual 98se/XP setup on the rig in my sig. WinXp ain't faster (good lord the bootup/shutdown times are like molasses compared to 98se), nor more stable. Now there's many things I don't do that you may, like rip DVDs etc. Maybe there are some features you benefit by, which I don't use/need/want.

There are many sites which have compared XP to ME or 98se for gaming, no advantage to XP ever found. Instead of "theorizing", I've compared the two on my dual setup. Know what? XP isn't faster and I rarely needed a patch to play many current games like Far Cry, KoTOR etc. You gotta have the patches for XP, not 98se.

If you don't swallow the BS marketing hype of M$ and actually tried for yourself, you'll prolly be surprised, notwithstanding the features I don't use (ripping DVDs etc.)

Business apps (accounting/spreadsheets/word processing/email/networking) have not improved in speed and/or stability since win 3.1 and the 486 DX chip.

By the nature of the design, winXp is horrible as far as security issues. Blaster worms, 60mhz refresh issues, re-activation. Bah, your using an OS designed, not for you, but large corporate IT adminstrators, with no tangibles bene's anyone can seem to prove for (small) users like me.

So, only 6% of pc in the business environment use XP and you stick with your contention that other OS's are hardly used &amp; outdated and therfore support s/b ceased?

Simple math says 94% don't beleive XP is superior, or at least not worth the $ to "upgrade". If 98se etc were so unstable/slow you'd think the small amount $ (for a business anyway) would need to upgrade would be worth it. (downtime, hassle, loss of productivity etc.)

Please, link me the sites that say something like "our IT dept has found 37% less service calls found since using XP, or 24% less downtime" etc. Or, find a link comparing FPS in gaming for XP versus 98se etc. that shows an advantage to XP in gaming. Lord knows I've looked. They all report about the same. One may be faster 1% here, slower there. But I've NEVER found any sites doing comparisons to show even a remotely significant difference. WHY? I can only assume after all this searching that there is none. And, again, I've tried for myself on a dual boot system, and not found any bene to XP.

Personally, I wish M$ would release an OS specifiaclly for small users like me. Maybe something along the lines of the kernal used in the Xbox. Stripped down and fast runnin, hogging very little resources. A pure gaming OS. As for biz, I'll stick with 98se till my software vendors make me move. Judging by the paltry biz usage of XP, that ain't gonna be real soon.

 

[MrChad]

:roll:

Most businesses haven't switched to XP because a good number of them invested a lot of money to migrate from NT to 2000. XP does not offer enough advantages over 2000 for corporate users to warrant a massive upgrade from 2000 to XP.

XP is optimized for your hardware, whether or not you believe it.

 

[THUGSROOK]

its difficult to ignore the simplicity of Win9x. its small and to the point.
yes it has a few deficiancies that a typical power user can get around easily, but it certainly IS NOT as bad what ppl in this forum make it out to be. how many ppl here have run Win9x on todays modern systems? im willing to bet that none of you have.

WinXP is better?
im not blind, i see all the help threads posted for WinXP. overall WinXP has way more problems then Win9x ever had.

ive been running both 98 &amp; XP for quite some time now... XP is not as great as this forum makes it out to be.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
its difficult to ignore the simplicity of Win9x. its small and to the point.
yes it has a few deficiancies that a typical power user can get around easily, but it certainly IS NOT as bad what ppl in this forum make it out to be. how many ppl here have run Win9x on todays modern systems? im willing to bet that none of you have.

WinXP is better?
im not blind, i see all the help threads posted for WinXP. overall WinXP has way more problems then Win9x ever had.

ive been running both 98 &amp; XP for quite some time now... XP is not as great as this forum makes it out to be.

That's a poor argument. The majority of Windows users on this forum are using XP. Of course there are going to be more threads for XP-related help.

Why would I run 98 on a modern system? That's equivalent to spending $4000 on an HDTV and buying a bunch of VHS tapes to show it off.

 

[LanFear]

Originally posted by: nihl8tor88
<<Windows 98/ME were worthless pieces of trash operating systems as they weren't even real 32-bit code and constantly crashed all the time when ever doing anything even the slightest bit memory intensive. I can't believe how many hardware vendors still support those pieces of trash OS's.>>
....



Windows Me was definately a POS, i can't believe people were forced to use it with dell's and HP's, such an awful awful OS. I can't even count how many ME machines i had to wipe. 98/98SE on the other hand were great. I think it was MS's best OS in it's heyday. You ran into memory problems occasionally if you had a gig of ram or more becuase it didn't know how to manage it all, but who the hell needed a gig+ or ram in a 98 box except for bragging rights. You could run any app and any game with 512MB ram no problem. Still have my retail copy of 98SE just in case i want to play all those great old games, gotta love VirtualPC.

 

[LanFear]

Windows XP is outstanding and far superior to WIndows 98/ME, but definitely not Windows 2000. If you think XP is too much of a resource hog, then go with Windows 2000 which doesn't hog many resources and still is a quality OS, and arguably the better of the two. But face it. Windows 98/ME don't even compare with Windows 2000 or Windows XP when it comes to which are quality opertaing systems and which should be left in the dust.

Why not instead learn how to disable all the extra crap that you don't need in windows XP. Even though by default, M$ integrates it's services in everything, damn that svchost.exe, In most cases you can turn off quite a few services that you'll never need. Sure there are more, but a great resource regarding XP's services
http://www.blackviper.com/

 

[Link19]

Got any proof other than anedotal/personal opinion stuff?

I sure as heck can't find any after hours n hours of search.

I have 6 pc's. Most of which use win98se. I don't have "stability issues". Never have.

Used ME and 98se for gaming until last month, now I'm using win2K sp4 on my primary gaming rig cuz I'm playing Doom 3. B4 that, I had a dual 98se/XP setup on the rig in my sig. WinXp ain't faster (good lord the bootup/shutdown times are like molasses compared to 98se), nor more stable. Now there's many things I don't do that you may, like rip DVDs etc. Maybe there are some features you benefit by, which I don't use/need/want.

There are many sites which have compared XP to ME or 98se for gaming, no advantage to XP ever found. Instead of "theorizing", I've compared the two on my dual setup. Know what? XP isn't faster and I rarely needed a patch to play many current games like Far Cry, KoTOR etc. You gotta have the patches for XP, not 98se.

If you don't swallow the BS marketing hype of M$ and actually tried for yourself, you'll prolly be surprised, notwithstanding the features I don't use (ripping DVDs etc.)

Business apps (accounting/spreadsheets/word processing/email/networking) have not improved in speed and/or stability since win 3.1 and the 486 DX chip.

By the nature of the design, winXp is horrible as far as security issues. Blaster worms, 60mhz refresh issues, re-activation. Bah, your using an OS designed, not for you, but large corporate IT adminstrators, with no tangibles bene's anyone can seem to prove for (small) users like me.

So, only 6% of pc in the business environment use XP and you stick with your contention that other OS's are hardly used &amp; outdated and therfore support s/b ceased?

Simple math says 94% don't beleive XP is superior, or at least not worth the $ to "upgrade". If 98se etc were so unstable/slow you'd think the small amount $ (for a business anyway) would need to upgrade would be worth it. (downtime, hassle, loss of productivity etc.)

Please, link me the sites that say something like "our IT dept has found 37% less service calls found since using XP, or 24% less downtime" etc. Or, find a link comparing FPS in gaming for XP versus 98se etc. that shows an advantage to XP in gaming. Lord knows I've looked. They all report about the same. One may be faster 1% here, slower there. But I've NEVER found any sites doing comparisons to show even a remotely significant difference. WHY? I can only assume after all this searching that there is none. And, again, I've tried for myself on a dual boot system, and not found any bene to XP.

Personally, I wish M$ would release an OS specifiaclly for small users like me. Maybe something along the lines of the kernal used in the Xbox. Stripped down and fast runnin, hogging very little resources. A pure gaming OS. As for biz, I'll stick with 98se till my software vendors make me move. Judging by the paltry biz usage of XP, that ain't gonna be real soon.

I used to use Windows 98 on a Pentium III 600MHz machine and it crashed a lot. I used Windows XP on that same machine, and it was as solid as a rock. Come to think of it, it's hard for me to believe that your using WIndows 2000 SP4 as your main OS, yet you think Windows 98 is actually better than Windows XP. I'm not trying to flame anybody, I'm just stating that I think Windows XP and WIndows 2000 are way better than any of Windows 9X. I mean Windows XP is based on Windows 2000, yet you still think 98SE is better than XP? I respect Windows 2000 and think it's a quality OS and in many cases may be the better choice than Windows XP. But Windows 2000 is clearly a lot better than Windows 98SE for a decent PC with compatible hardware and software. Windows 2000 is without a doubt the best choice for those of you who hate how bloated Windows XP or don't want to deal with the XP activation. And you can turn off all the bloated crap Windows XP comes with and it won't be such a resource hog.

 

[RajunCajun]

Here's my take on this subject.

I have Win98SE loaded on my secondary hd, so by switching pri &amp; sec drives in my bios I can boot into 98 or XP. So I run both OSs on a modern machine and can compare both systems. The reason I've got 98 is XP (THE LATEST &amp; GREATEST) refuses to run some older software correctly. I'm talking about games, word processors, etc. I for one cannot afford (or desire) to upgrade all my software just so it matches XP.

Bottom line? 98 just blows!!! It is so much faster - booting, running apps, gaming, net surfing - everything! I've had 98 for years on several systems starting with a 300a celeron. There has never been frequent crashes/bsod/etc. Yes, every once in awhile a maladjusted program will make it hang, but hey, it's no more frequent than XP. At least 98 shows you something - XP just hangs for minutes in a stupor-like state until I have to UNPLUG the desktop! 98 just lets me do a 3 finger reboot, something XP hasn't learned to do yet. In case you ask I have all the latest patches for XP, except SP2 (holding off for now).

Realize that this is just my $0.02 from my limited experience. We have all had different experiences, good and bad. But don't bad mouth me for using 98 because it's older. I like it, but also like XP to some extent. That's why both OSs are loaded on my PC - CHOICE!

 

[LanFear]

98SE running on a 2.4ghz, gotta be smoking fast. I loved 98SE for it's speed and reliability, don't think it ever really crashed on me. Also you didn't have to have a massive system to have a decent machine, Diamond Viper and Direct X 3 anyone? Damn i'm getting old.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Simple answer: Yes - as long as the various hardware mfg's have customers running those OSes.

Your original question, Link19, becomes a little clearer when you view it from the perspective of general customers of hardware vendors, and realize that they should support whatever OS that their customers are using, for as long as they are using it for, as long as it makes business sense. That includes "alternative" OSes, like MacOS and Linux, as well as just the Win9x/WinNT-based OS crowd.

There are still plenty of users out there, with possibly just as much or more market share, running Win9x-based OSes (mostly home users here - businesses tend to use NT or W2K, at least) as are running recent NT-based OSes like XP. Money talks. That's really the long and the short of it.

Certainly, the fact the MS themselves will soon no longer support Win9x-based OSes will factor into it, because certain device categories really require OS-level support in some aspects of their operation, so it would require a lot more effort for mfg's to support those things.

But the simple fact that MS tried to kill support for Win9x totally already, and was forced, by their customers, to extend support for another year or so, speaks for the number of people still running those "obsolete" OSes.

I still keep a Win98se partition around on my multi-boot, in fact, and I'm glad that most of my hardware is supported. However, the fact that both Via's USB 2.0 drivers, and my LinkSys WUSB54G isn't supported on Win98se, is frustrating.