Why Won't They Let It Die?

G

GreNME

2[H]4U
Joined
May 18, 2002
Messages
2,604
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39119028,00.htm

I seriously can't believe it. Seven years old, and they won't let it fall to the wayside. The majority of the user base is running 2000 and above, and they won't let it go. All development for their products is for a completely different kernel, and they won't drop support. The OS is a sieve as far as security is concerned, but they will keep trying to patch it.

What a waste of resources.
 
anybody using win98/me in an environment where they would need to pay for 'critical' support is just wrong in so many ways.......
 
"The majority of the user base is running 2000 and above"


Where you get that from? I've heard it said, just the same, that there's scads of ppl still running 98...
 
We've still got some PCs running win98 in our office, but we don't want support... we want them to die so that have good reasons to upgrade hardware and run 2000 or XP. Luckily don't have any Me PCs, that would just be stupid :D
 
Would you believe that a lot of our standards and tech writing people are working on P-pro laptops with win95 installed? Funny, but sad and true.
 
PPro Laptops? I wasn't aware such a beast existed; it'd be kinda like a Xeon laptop...
 
That's what the My Computer / properties screen pulls up anyway, P-Pro at 266mhz iirc. Ancient beast.
 
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies more to the business world than to the enthusiast. We have DOS and Win95 apps running some of our CNC equipment and I'm still using Netware 3.12 for a fileserver (current uptime is over 1.5 years, and that's just because I downed it to give it a good cleaning). We also have several Win98 stations used for general clerical duties... Word97 and Excel work just as well there as it does on my 3.2 P4 workstation. It costs time and money to upgrade things like this, and if they're doing the job there's absolutely no reason to upgrade other than to accomodate new hardware.

Of course, I'm sure the software companies are looking at things from a profit pov, and would very much like to force you to upgrade.
 
Here's what they should have done ( pipe dream, and there are many things that would block this I know ): They should have outsourced the support ( at least ), and preferrably the updates.

They have every reasonable right to do so, most of the public can understand this. Then, as these things go, support and patches would get shoddy, encouraging people to upgrade.

Just my take on it, and keep in mind, I like playing people like baby grands.
 
Originally posted by MEfreak
That's what the My Computer / properties screen pulls up anyway, P-Pro at 266mhz iirc. Ancient beast.
Click to expand...

Those are PII laptops. Win95 isn't smart enough to identify any of the more advanced P6 core-based CPUs.
 
I get the most detailed info from here and here. The guy who does all the collecting of info gets it straight from Google's zeitgiest, which is probably the best non-partisan way to gauge usage as far as on the net. So, considering that there may be another few thousand 9x workstations out there not connected to the web in some way, or who have not accessed Google in any way (highly unlikely, but it does happen), the source is accurate to a low margin of error.

Let's look at market trends along with share numbers:
osshare2.gif


Notice the constant downward trend of 98 machines over the last two and a half years. The trend shows no sign of stopping or slowing down, and what would have probably finished the OS off (aside from a stubborn 5-10% who won't give it up) as far as common usage would have been cutting further support. Really, why bother supporting an OS that is so obviously inferior, is becoming less and less supported by the hardware industry, and isn't even compatible with newer technologies unless one makes the software jump through hoops to allow 98 to work? It's bass-friggin-ackwards.

Here's what they should have done ( pipe dream, and there are many things that would block this I know ): They should have outsourced the support ( at least ), and preferrably the updates.
Click to expand...
I agree. If they feel they must keep beating this stinking dead horse, let someone else swing the stick for them.
 
Originally posted by GreNME
The guy who does all the collecting of info gets it straight from Google's zeitgiest, which is probably the best non-partisan way to gauge usage as far as on the net.
Click to expand...

Good old LB... :)
I was about to link it, then thought better of it once I found out there's, been no press release confirming the news stories.

I'm not in the Windows group and not acting as an official rep, so this is entirely my opinion, and given that no release has been issued by Microsoft, I'll limit my opinions to the data at hand...

Anyway, I wouldn't be sad to see Win98 go for plenty of reasons (stability, security, hardware compat, app compat, usability, ... etc). Secondly, the usage of the OS is definitely declining. Third, if MS was to drop support right now, doesn't it look like some customers would be left out in the cold?

The Google #'s show a decline of 20% in the last year for Win98\ME and given the data is over a month old, the current number is probably 25%. Even though it's beyond the planned support lifetime of the product, don't you think it's the right thing to do to support it still? If the news turns out to be true, I won't be dissapointed.

While I don't really mind applications vendors dropping support for older OSes (within reason), security support for a released product is essential IMHO.
 
But it's been seven years, including a change in the operating system that is a whole lot larger than the difference between 95 and 98 (and, arguably, 3.1.1 and 95). Totally different. Why commit all those people to handle trying to bring an obviously outdated and incapable OS us to the level of modern OSes? Down to its very core, it is not able to handle the modern model for computing.

Like I said, it just seems like a waste. Of course, considering we're still in the first few generations of widespread personal computing as a societal norm, this is probably pretty much par for the course.


And yeah, that LB is an okay guy, IMO. :)
 
Originally posted by GreNME
But it's been seven years, including a change in the operating system that is a whole lot larger than the difference between 95 and 98 (and, arguably, 3.1.1 and 95). Totally different. Why commit all those people to handle trying to bring an obviously outdated and incapable OS us to the level of modern OSes? Down to its very core, it is not able to handle the modern model for computing.

Like I said, it just seems like a waste. Of course, considering we're still in the first few generations of widespread personal computing as a societal norm, this is probably pretty much par for the course.


And yeah, that LB is an okay guy, IMO. :)
Click to expand...

Firstly, there's been no release from MS about the support extension, so I'm currently treating it as a rumor. (fair enough?)

The only thing I see about Windows98 and 2006 is the following quote from here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;ln;LifeWin
"Extended hotfix support for this product will end on 30-Jun-2003. After 16-Jan-2004, this product will be obsolete and assisted support will no longer be available from Microsoft. Online self-help support will continue to be available until at least 30-Jun-2006."


If the news you linked turns out to be true and there is some as yet unanounced revision, I wouldn't expect anything more than minimal security updates. But again, this is just my opinion. Actually, given the rate of decline, it looks like Win98 will bottom out in 6months to ~10-15%, or to 5-10% in a year. In that case mid 2006 seems a long time, but again, just my opnion. I don't know what data the Windows team has, but I can speculate that Windows Update data is pretty relevent.

edit: updated the link so vBul doesn't mess with it...
 
Based on that chart, it looks like linux isn't going anywhere.

I knew there was a reason I didn't use it...oh yeah, compiling drivers sucks.
 
Originally posted by GreNME
The OS is a sieve as far as security is concerned, but they will keep trying to patch it.

What a waste of resources.
Click to expand...

And yet the last slew of viruses to come around only affected 2k/XP systems, mean while the 98 users could feel at ease because they couldn't be infected by these trojans/backdoors/worms/etc that only targeted the newer kernals.
 
Ssssssh! Don't interrupt the fanboi rants with facts, Roach. You know how reality makes them act.


Let's look at market trends along with share numbers:



Notice the constant downward trend of 98 machines over the last two and a half years. The trend shows no sign of stopping or slowing down, and what would have probably finished the OS off (aside from a stubborn 5-10% who won't give it up) as far as common usage would have been cutting further support. Really, why bother supporting an OS that is so obviously inferior, is becoming less and less supported by the hardware industry, and isn't even compatible with newer technologies unless one makes the software jump through hoops to allow 98 to work? It's bass-friggin-ackwards.
Click to expand...


And here is a prime example (pardon the pun) of how not to analyze statistics. The poster cites one fact (that the number of Win98 users has declined in recent years) and declares "Case closed!"

Only there is a lot more information on that chart that paints a more complex picture. Despite being out of production for two years Win98 is still the second-most popular OS in use, running on nearly 50% more machines than Win2k. The 27% installed base for Win98 actually understates it's importance to Microsoft. By this data just under a third of Microsoft's OS customers are using Win98. No company can afford to quit providing support for a third of its customers. Especially one that has a putrid reputation for service like Microsoft.

There is also a huge error in the belief that if Microsoft were to stop writing updates and accepting tech calls on 9x, it would lead to a huge (remember we are talking about more than a quarter of PC users) exodus to new XP machines. Dream on. People keep their 9x rigs because they do what they want them to do. The never-ending parade of critical security patches for XP isn't moving anyone off the fence, either. The only thing that will kill 9x is the same thing that drives every big move: a killer app that can only run on a new machine. Aside from that you're waiting for hard drives to die and that can take a long, long time on a box used for web apps and word processing.

The boi's also greatly overstate what this decision means to Microsoft. I just installed 98SE on a dual-boot rig and the most recent security patch or update to the OS was nearly two years old. Everything since has been for plug-ins like IE and WMP. Microsoft doesn't need to outsource support because they're not going to be writing more than a couple of patches, and that only if a hacker goes oldschool for whatever reason.

Ending support or extending it really has only a miniscule effect on Microsoft. The most substantial reason behind this was PR. Microsoft could not afford to be accused of abandoning support for a third of their customers while it's trying to build government and public support for Palladium, or whatever they're calling it this week.





BHD
 
Originally posted by KingPariah777
Based on that chart, it looks like linux isn't going anywhere.

I knew there was a reason I didn't use it...oh yeah, compiling drivers sucks.
Click to expand...
*sniff* *sniff*

Eww...I think this thread stepped on a troll. Scrape it off! Scrape it off!

King: Was this thread, in any way, related to linux? Let me answer that for you: No, it wasn't.

Now shoo, I don't really have time to play with the trolls right now.
 
But still it is good thing that MS is still supporting 98 since their is a high probability that there is still code in XP that was in 98.

Only by understanding the past can we see where we are going

If you go and make an XL spreadsheet and then under word open that same spreadsheet you will get an open dialogue that is from the Win3.11 days thus 98 must be supported to see what legacy code could cause a problem
 
Originally posted by Roach
And yet the last slew of viruses to come around only affected 2k/XP systems, mean while the 98 users could feel at ease because they couldn't be infected by these trojans/backdoors/worms/etc that only targeted the newer kernals.
Click to expand...

If your referring specifically to the RPC exploits, that would amount to two vulnerabilities in that particular service. The number of viruses written for a particular exploit is not a valid reason for staying with Windows 9x.

If you have any other viruses that affect *only* Windows 2000/XP machines that are not RPC related, I would be interested to know what they are.
 
I'm just a little curious why anybody using 2000+ cares that M$ continues to support 9x. It's not like that is going to pull any significant development away from current OS's (don't worry, Longhorn will take care of that), or that the price of Windows will rise because of it (Bill will think of other ways to do that). What's the big deal?
 
Originally posted by XOR != OR
*sniff* *sniff*

Eww...I think this thread stepped on a troll. Scrape it off! Scrape it off!

King: Was this thread, in any way, related to linux? Let me answer that for you: No, it wasn't.

Now shoo, I don't really have time to play with the trolls right now.
Click to expand...

HAHAHA sorry. You caught me. I will shut up now.
 
Originally posted by Roach
And yet the last slew of viruses to come around only affected 2k/XP systems, mean while the 98 users could feel at ease because they couldn't be infected by these trojans/backdoors/worms/etc that only targeted the newer kernals.
Click to expand...
Care to list them all?
Originally posted by BaldHeadedDork
Ssssssh! Don't interrupt the fanboi rants with facts, Roach. You know how reality makes them act.
Click to expand...
Gee, not only are you completely uninformed and (as your later post implies) a typical ABM misinformer, but you are attempting to insult me by saying I'm a fanboi? Wow, I don't know if I can debate against the skills of someone who insults and then attempts to redefine what a fact is (i.e.—makes shit up). Maybe I should run away from the obvious superiority of your tactics...

Or not.

But, before I show you the obvious errors rampant throughout your attempt at logic, allow me to address this "slew" of 2K/XP-only viruses:

First, let's go over the "big ones" of 2003
  • 2003's biggest pain in the rear, the SQL Slammer—hey, would ya look at that! It affected 98 machines as well as 2K/XP.
  • The Sobig family—a virus that had many variants, Sobig affected 98 machines as well as 2K/XP machines.
  • Then there was Lovegate, which followed the backwards-compatibility path all the way to Win 95.
  • Who can forget Klez—don't worry, it had 98 covered as well as 2K/XP.
  • Bugbear—it bugged the hell out of 98 just as well as 2K/XP.
  • And Fizzer—also backwards compatible to Win 95.
  • And Ganda variants—played with all Windows back to 95
  • Incidentally, Yaha had the same behavior
  • Unfortunately, Sircam liked Win 9x so much, it would only play with them, and wouldn't replicate on any newer Windows.

    In case someone isn't counting, none of the above were 2K/XP only. However, let's move on to the one exception...
  • The ever-popular Blaster Worm, also known as MSBlast, also known as Welchia (or Nachi), among other less popular names. All of these different names are the same virus. Calling it a different name and changing the source location in the RPC calls does not make it a different virus. It's the same thing with a new name. What's more, the vulnerability for this virus comes from a good-old BSD RPC library flaw, so maybe Microsoft shouldn't have taken a cue from *nix regarding remote procedure call in this case.

    Now that we've gotten the "whole slew" out of the way...
  • How about Swen—covers Windows 95/98/NT/Me/2K/XP.
  • There is the QHosts trojan—looks like it affects 95/98/Me/2K/XP.
  • There is the Mimail worm, as well as its many copies—affects 95/98/Me/2K/XP.
  • There is Sober.C—affects 95/98/Me/2K/XP.
  • There is Dumaru—affects 95/98/Me/2K/XP
  • Trojan.Xombe—95/98/Me/2K/XP
  • Randex—95/98/Me/2K/XP

And all of the ones listed after Blaster showed up after Blaster. In fact, the latest five viruses:All of them cover 98 as well as 2K/XP. One can also say that the holes allowing these viruses to spread are the result of code for 2K/XP that has been written to also work on 9x, mostly through non-OS programs (Outlook, IE, etc.) that both the old and new share. The smartest thing Apple did when they released OS X was to not have it work with any of the code base of OS 9 (with very few and small exceptions), choosing to rewrite it instead. People may bitch about it, but the vulnerabilities that were in OS 9 are not present in OS X. Could Microsoft have taken the same steps? Of course not. However, not writing all the software code to be practically cross-compatible would have made things far more secure for the newer OS.

So, next time you are going to point out the "facts" to me, I suggest you get them straight yourself first. ;)


Originally posted by BaldHeadedDork
And here is a prime example (pardon the pun) of how not to analyze statistics. The poster cites one fact (that the number of Win98 users has declined in recent years) and declares "Case closed!"
Click to expand...
And this is a prime example of how to not attempt to pretend you know how to debate logically, when all you can do is blow smoke. BaldHeadedDork decides to take one part of one post—hardly my entire argument—and argues against that as if that were the entire of my point. It is not, and even his own arguments are not sufficient against even that one point of my own argument.

Only there is a lot more information on that chart that paints a more complex picture. Despite being out of production for two years Win98 is still the second-most popular OS in use, running on nearly 50% more machines than Win2k. The 27% installed base for Win98 actually understates it's importance to Microsoft.
Click to expand...
And yet BaldHeadedDork cannot tell us what this "more complex picture" is. In fact, he fails to notice that the trend stretches back to the inception of XP, and if the current trend—considering there has been support for 9x—continues, by the middle of 2005, 9x will be completely phased out. What BHD fails to recognize is that support has done nothing to slow or stop this downward trend, making continued support not worth keeping for an OS that is rapidly phasing out. Using percentages does not change the overall percentages, nor does it change the much broader trends that are changing the percentages over a recorded period. BaldHeadedDork would have us look only at the last percentages on the chart as the sole determining factors in an opinion of whether 98 should be supported or not, when the broader scope shows that, supported or not, 98 is falling in share dramatically, while 2K and XP are going up (moreso for XP). In other words, both 2K and XP are moving up, 98 is moving down, and BaldHeadedDork wants us to ignore this so that he can attempt to make a point.

By this data just under a third of Microsoft's OS customers are using Win98. No company can afford to quit providing support for a third of its customers. Especially one that has a putrid reputation for service like Microsoft.
Click to expand...
Once again, BHD is using faulty logic to provide a point about support, and also decides that throwing an insult in there will make him sound more believable. Microsoft has already extended support for Windows 98—twice—so the claims about poor support are so much utter bullshit, while the "third of the customers" is once again unrepresentative of the trend. By the summer, that number will be less than a quarter. By fall, less than 20%. By spring 2005 ~10%. Exactly when is it "okay" to cut support for a sinking ship?

There is also a huge error in the belief that if Microsoft were to stop writing updates and accepting tech calls on 9x, it would lead to a huge (remember we are talking about more than a quarter of PC users) exodus to new XP machines. Dream on.
Click to expand...
Since no one said this, your argument is a straw man. No one said that all users are going to go out and buy new machines—which is Apple's way of doing things—it has simply been said that the current trend is moving towards less people running Windows 98. For the cost of XP Home, a person can upgrade any machine made in the last four years. While that may not sound appetizing to the enthusiasts here who play hardcore games on their machines, these enthusiasts wouldn't be gaming on those machines anyway, so their argument is a moot point. Not everyone has the bleeding-edge technology, nor do they need it.

People keep their 9x rigs because they do what they want them to do.
Click to expand...
Only barely, and MS has to keep writing new code for 9x so it can do just that. Like I said, a waste of resources.

The never-ending parade of critical security patches for XP isn't moving anyone off the fence, either.
Click to expand...
Um, you don't run patches for 98? How interesting that you are damning XP for not being secure, since you don't bother to count the many more patches for 98 security. Do you really want to do a count of the number of patches, just for security, between 98 and XP? If you want to do the homework for XP, I'll do the homework for 98. I'll gaurantee you that you will be shown to be very incorrect, though. You may not want to go there, kiddo.

The only thing that will kill 9x is the same thing that drives every big move: a killer app that can only run on a new machine.
Click to expand...
It's called Microsoft Office 2003. And go ahead and slam MS office (and, predictably, Microsoft themselves) all you want, but there is no office suite with more integration than MS Office, and 2003 edition will take roughly a year to a year and a half to begin replacing current Office installs, primarily because many businesses and large companies didn't upgrade to Office XP very fast, and it's more economic to make a 2-revision jump than to take it in steps. You may not have been taught that in your HS economics class, but take it from someone who has handled purchasing for a Fortune 500 company, that's the way things go.

The boi's also greatly overstate what this decision means to Microsoft. I just installed 98SE on a dual-boot rig and the most recent security patch or update to the OS was nearly two years old. Everything since has been for plug-ins like IE and WMP. Microsoft doesn't need to outsource support because they're not going to be writing more than a couple of patches, and that only if a hacker goes oldschool for whatever reason.
Click to expand...
The great majority of patches in 2003 for XP and 2K have been for Outlook (Express), WMP, and IE. The fact that you are willing to call any security update for XP an OS update, but are unwilling to call any security update for 98 an OS update shows how so very biased you are, and your piss-poor claim of a "hacker" going "oldschool" shows how little you know of the actual exploits. In case you didn't know it, genius, pretty much every exploit but a few have been written by taking advantage of holes that are throwbacks of old Windows 98 crap. The Outlook viruses, the bots, the e-mail trojans—all are working from flaws inherited from 98. You are seriously uninformed.

Ending support or extending it really has only a miniscule effect on Microsoft.
Click to expand...
I thought you said that since just less than a third of the users were still on 98, that Microsoft can't afford to end support for it. Now you're contradicting yourself. And if they kept support, they would have to keep up and maintain the R&D for backwards compatibility of things that are going to be updated for 2K and XP, which would be a waste of their usually-well-paid programmers and researchers. Maybe it's miniscule to you, but having one's staff working efficiently towards a forward-moving goal is probably a bit more important to the project managers in Microsoft. Nice of you to not consider how the rest of the world works, though.

Microsoft could not afford to be accused of abandoning support for a third of their customers while it's trying to build government and public support for Palladium, or whatever they're calling it this week.
Click to expand...
Okay, that just sent me into fits of laughter. Thank you for making my week here. Do you even know what "Palladium" is? Because if you did, then you would have to be some kind of time traveller, since there isn't an adequate definition of Palladium yet. Are you still going by that "document" printed almost a year ago by that programmer who was pretty much rejected as spreading FUD about Palladium, since he was not involved and had no real or factually-based knowledge of what Palladium was? I remember it being spread around /. for a while, and you certainly pass all the criteria for being a typical /.-ABM-er.

I tell you what: When you learn to actually base your assumptions on facts instead of bullshit, feel free to come back here and give us an honest opinion of what you think of me personally again (because "fanboi" just wasn't clear enough), and base more of your arguments upon your own anecdotal experience with your dual-boot 98/2K "gaming" machine. ;)

Originally posted by agent420
I'm just a little curious why anybody using 2000+ cares that M$ continues to support 9x.
Click to expand...
 
Like has been said, if it works don't touch it. We have some old machine still doing a fine job.

2x386 8MB Ram running dos, and program to run stacking machines
2x386 24MB ram running win3.11 and a program to run sorting machines

4x486 80MB RAM running win95, and are basically dumb-terminals
4x486 64MB RAM running win 98 that are our time clocks
8xp-pro 233MHz 64MB Ram running NT4 interface the predictive dialer
15x Celeron 433 64MB ram running win98 that basically only run openoffice and reflection.

You wanna get really old, our dial-in server is a PowerMac 6100/66 72MB Ram running MacOS 7.5.3. Our wire machines are the same config runnign 7.6.1. We've got another mac of the same config with only 24MB Ram that just runs a script to download an ftp file, parse what we need from it, and name the output file how we like.
 
But Dak, this isn't about whether it works or not, it's about whether Microsoft should bother supporting it or not, even if only for critical updates.

Apple won't touch your 7.6.1 machines for support. Neither will any of the software companies for any 3rd party software running on them (with few, if any, exceptions).

Win 95 and 3.1.1 support is gone. There is, however, a small list of company-only software vendors that still support software used on those systems, mostly because the software costs thousands and they never wrote new versions (and are instead resting on their laurels... they won't be around in five years like that).

There's very little that is still supported on NT4 on the server level, though there are some backup and service utilities around.

But if they all work, that's great, as well as a testament to the IT department or the outsourced consulting (could be either, as that's not a huge setup, but it could warrant in-house staff). However, does it really make sense for Apple, Microsoft, or any of the third party vendors to continue to develop patches and support for those older systems, especially in cases of 7+ years?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top