Windows 98 fans, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now. The once all-powerful operating system is no more – at least in Microsoft’s eyes.
The software company yesterday officially ended all support for Win 98, SE and Millennium Edition (ME), including security updates.
The company had dropped free technical support for these systems in 2003, but had continued to provide critical updates and paid technical support. Microsoft yesterday said that the company is ending support for these products “because they are outdated and these older operating systems can expose customers to security risks.” A technical database with Windows 98-related support questions will be maintained on Microsoft’s site until July next year.
Around 50 million people round the globe are believed to be still using
Win98 systems daily.
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has vowed that the company will never again leave it five-to-six years between major OS releases. Vista, the next version of Windows is due early in 2007 – two years late, and five years since the launch of Windows XP. “We’ll never have a gap between Windows releases as long as the one between XP and Vista,” vowed Ballmer at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston.
