Windows 98 spared from the MS guillotine for now
Microsoft Grants 2nd Stay Of Execution To Win98!
As recently as about two months ago, Microsoft pegged June 30 2003 as
the shutdown date for Win98 support. The basic plan was that, as of
that
date, two weeks from now, Win98 would no longer be patched, updated, or
bug-fixed. (See
http://www.informationweek.com/story...icleID=8700301
)
But sometime in the last few weeks, Microsoft quietly extended the
date.
This will affect tens of millions of users worldwide!
Now, the "'nonsupport" date for Win98 has been rolled back 6 months to
Jan 16 2004, and the new "end of life" date has been pushed back to Jan
16 2005.
This is the second time Microsoft has pushed these dates back, which---
on the plus side--- suggests MS is being receptive to its customers'
needs: The company probably was getting tons of negative feedback on
ceasing support for so enormously popular an OS. On the other hand it
also suggests that MS may not be seeing the rate of XP upgrades it
hoped
for; and/or may be fearing that users will defect to Linux instead of
moving to XP. Keeping Win98 alive at least keeps those users in the
Microsoft fold for now.
In any case, this buys a little time for those still using Win98. At
some point, the OS will cease to be supported--- eventually, there
won't
be any more patches, updates, and such--- so if you're still using
Win98, you still need to make concrete plans for the future. Sooner or
later, the lights will go out on this venerable OS. But at least
there's
a little more breathing room, now!
The latest word from MS is in the section titled "Product Life-Cycle
Road Map" towards the bottom of the page at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycleconsumer.mspx .
Source: The Langa List
