No more updates for me. They’ve just stopped supporting Windows 98 and Windows ME.
I use Windows 98SE, and I’m not complaining about this; I can understand the reasoning and it makes sense. They can’t support old OSs for ever, and all the major software makers are doing this: I have to use old versions of Adobe Acrobat, Quick Time (no more movie trailers!), the list goes on.
What interests me though is, have I got company out there? Any Dopers persisting with old software, either because it does all they want, inertia, whatever?
Can anybody beat Windows 98? Anybody connecting to the board with Windows 95, Windows 3.0 or earlier? Amigas even?
I use Windows 98SE in the music studio. I have a couple older music apps that run just fine in that enviroment (after I streamline the OS a bit).
It looks like I’ll be getting about 4 or 5 old dual Pentium rack servers from my work soon. I’m going to convert these to dedicated virtual synths and samplers. I’ll have to use Windows 2000 on those. Good thing I’ve got 6 Win2000 licenses retired from a past job.
We’ve been joking at work about getting Windows 3 running in VMware and going old school. Problem is no one remembers where their install disks are. I have Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 around here someplace.
I tried to get BeOS running on my laptop but no go.
I have a laptop which came with Win 98 (1st ed), and was never able to upgrade it to 98SE sucessfully. Then I had to make the jump to XP, which through memory and processor upgrades I was able to get it to run OK. I needed XP for wifi (though I may have been able to do a work around using a wireless bridge).
After XP’s SP2, it slowed to a crawl, so I tried once more for 98SE, which I was able to do. It was like a new laptop, fast lean and mean.
Yes I have zone alarm on that puppy, I guess I will just have to deal with no updates, this laptop just won’t do XP anymore.
I was using ME until I came across a killer deal on a new Dell laptop about three weeks ago. Wow, it’s soooo much less creaky and slow and it’s nice that I can finally see videos, etc… Totally worth $500.
I have 3 PCs/laptops on XP and 2 on Win98SE. One of the Win98SE will be upgraded to XP Pro in the fall.
The remaining one is a 700mhz PC that the kids beat up and I reload as needed.
One of the XPs is also for kids/guests beat up on and I reload it as needed.
I also maintain my parents Win98SE machine that I built 5 years ago and just reloaded with a newer hard drive as the original died. My father broke down and bought a cheap Dell for under $500 though. So I am setting up my parents home network tomorrow.
I find Win98SE easy to reload, so as long as I have slower machines I will keep using it. Beside XP licenses cost a lot and I am only slowly migrating. I have an ME license somewhere, but I would never load it on a machine.
Jim {I use to like to work on cars, but then they got too complicated, who would think computers would be easy?}
I’m posting this message on Windows 98 right now. I bought this emachine back in 1998? Can’t remember the exact year. Anyhoo, this computer works fine for me–I won’t update anything until the computer melts. Then, I’ll schlep on down to Best Buy and purchase the newest system there that’s around $1,500.00 excluding the monitor. I plan to suck it up and buy the biggest flat screen monitor I can find.
The oldest OS I use more than once per week to do legitimate work is MacOS 8.6; I have it loaded on a 7100 and I use it to copy huge batches of TIFF images from one server volume to another without tying up my main machine. I do, on rare occasion, come to this board with it, using iCab.
The oldest OS I use just to play around in, not for productive or work-related purposes, is System 1 (technically System 0.97), the original Macintosh operating system that shipped in 1984. Far more often than that, I boot up System 6.0.8, for which I still have a full-fledged environment with all the extensions, control panels, TCP settings (yes it works on a modern ethernet network), and applications. (Sorry, no System 6 web browsers can handle vBulletin, or much of anything more complicated than the most deliberately backwards-compatible web sites, consisting of nothing but plain text some of which has links. No CSS, that’s for sure!)
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