From a Langalist document I received today:
" 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/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=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 ."
