A by-product of Microsoft’s decision to phase out support for some of its ‘old’ products, citing Java-related legal issues: users are going to be very exposed to viruses and bad stuff like that. Ottawa-based AssetMetrix Research Labs found that more than 80 percent of companies surveyed were still using Windows 98 and/or Windows 95.
“On January 16th, 2004, Microsoft Windows 98 enters the non-support portion of its support lifecycle. Windows 98 is considered obsolete, and security-based hot fixes will not be generally available for users of Windows 98 or Windows 98-Second Edition,” eWeek quoted Steve O’Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs, as saying.
This is daft. According to some reports, Microsoft doesn’t need to do all this until next September, raising suspicions that it’s just trying to make Sun — owner of Java — look like the evil wolf, and to force buying folk to migrate to XP. If any of this is true, I’d like to see Microsoft agree to provide security updates for at least Windows 98 users for as long as they can. I can’t see Sun, or the courts, objecting to that.