Retired Microsoft Operating Systems Still Popular

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Despite Microsoft's recent retirement of Windows 98, News.com reports that many users continue to cling to the company's older operating systems. The study cited in the article suggests that 80 percent of companies still have machines operating on Windows 95 or 98. While Windows 2000 was the most common OS in the study, just 6.6 percent of the desktop machines included in the survey were running Windows XP." The results aren't too surprising. I get a lot of user mail from Netscape 4 users, and it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere.

Of course

[Div3B0mbr]

It's not like upgrading Windows is free. If you were a small company who's focus wasn't IT would you upgrade? Hell no. Why would you? Your existing solution of Windows Crap is working just fine.

Why "up"grade?

[ka9dgx]

Why should I give up the use of 20 good workstations, Office 97, Windows 98, and everything working properly? I know that "up"grades never are. Things still work, we know how to use them, we've paid our money, we own everything.

The alternative is to throw everything out, buy all new hardware (do you really want me to try to run XP on a Pentium 200 with 64Mb of RAM?), get stuck with a lease on the software, and then to get locked into whatever upgrade cycle Bill thinks is best for Micro$oft.

Microsoft has chosen the greedy path, and eliminated themselves from the list of viable true upgrade paths. I'll upgrade those machines when RedHat (or someone else) gets their act together, supports the still functional Office 97 standard, and does it for less than $60/machine/year. All we need are bug and security patches!

--Mike--

People are figuring out the real use of computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 80s and early 90s, desktop machines were still by and large a new thing for many companies. Not only did many not really have a USE for them, they upgraded because they believed the marketing that said "Thou shalt need this upgrade"

Now, most people (managers especially) have a decade or more of computer use experience under their belt, perhaps even two, and can get a good idea for themselves of what a computer can actually do for them. Ten years experience seeing that a two-yearly upgrade cycle just leaves you with More Of The Same instead of something really new means people are seeing computers as just the tools they are, rather than something awe-inspiring that can solve their every problem

It's like Graphic User Interfaces - they're a hell of a lot more complex now than the original Mac, but that's OK. The original mac was introduced to people who'd never seen a computer before, let alone a GUI. Nowadays, by the time someone buys their first computer with their own money, they're buying a machine with an interface they already have YEARS of getting used to using, and the extra complexity has been learned into them from age 5.

That's a bit sad, in a way.

[Sheetrock]

Windows 2000 is a quantum leap beyond either the 9X/ME or NT lines. I couldn't imagine going back, although I don't see enough benefit to XP to move up just yet.

I'd bet the reasons users retain the older operating systems have more to do with familiarity and the difficulty of upgrading than with the pricing (which was my first reaction) -- although Windows 2000 and XP offer a stunning level of compatibility with older hardware and a greatly enhanced user experience, the ability to migrate applications from an old system to a new system leaves something to be desired when compared to the DOS days where one could simply copy an application over.

Microsoft may do well to adopt practices that increase the ability for users to upgrade painlessly, such as by doing away with their authentication system and promoting a means of moving a software package (with its associated configuration and data files) to a new Windows installation or to a different computer.

Re:EBay market for W2K will explode

[c_oflynn]

Or people will just pirate W2K for $0.50 (cost of a CD).

Original CD prices going up!

[professorhojo]

I read somewhere that lately the market price of original Win95 and Win98 CDs have been going up for the first time... um... EVER! (They're going like hotcakes on Ebay too.)

The market's a funny thing. Give your customers crappy features like DRM, and they'll find a way to tel you they're not interested... like back-grading to your previous versions.

You watch... i predict that soon Microsoft will find some way to prohibit the sale of these original CDs. A law will get passed, probably under the guise of national security.

prof. h.

Re:EBay market for W2K will explode

[Xner]

That's really irrelevant. Either you need to have all your licensing properly sorted out, in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with, or you don't. If you don't, then you also do not mind using any of the other less-than-proper approaches to get past WPA.

If anything I think there will be a booming black market in cracked WinXP disks, a record number of BSA audits, and perhaps even raiding of private residences if the lobbies push hard enough.
Then hopefully someone will understand that all WPA does is bug the people that actually paid for the products, and stop these silly practices.

A lot of Mac users on OS 8.x and 9.x, too

[ewg]

A lot of Mac users are on Mac OS 8.x or 9.x as well, or using the Classic environment to run applications for OS 9.x under Mac OS X.

It seems that when people buy a computer, they expect the software to last as long as the hardware.

Simple reason...

[SharpFang]

The only way to get Windows running on middle-class hardware is to install W98 or such...

I've seen in many stores computers with config like: 2GHZ CPU, some Radeon gfx card, DVD, 5+1 audio card and to all that 128MB RAM (DDR). And of course Windows XP Home Edition. How fast will all that run when it has to use swap memory all the time?!
Solution 1: Install more ram. And void warranty by doing so, because there's a warranty sticker on the case and no internals can be changed.
Solution 2: Install some OS for which 128M RAM is more than enough. Like W98SE or such.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[gnuadam]

The apple II's had a very common data acquisition mobo that allowed all sorts of physics experiments to be done. You could measure temperature in real time, trace a trajectory, and do other neat stuff. Why upgrade when these experiments work just fine with the old apples?

It's physics, not computer science. The data is important, not the computer that records it.

If it works, don't fix it

[NetDanzr]

I run Win98, but only because my Win95 machine died on me. As somebody who requires a computer for basic office tasks (Word, Excel), some photoediting and HTML editing, a 400MHz machine with 64MB RAM, Win98, Office 2000, Photoshop 6, HomeSite 4.5 and Opera 7.x is all I need.

I've tried WinXP, and found it very frustrating. Rather than learning how to configure things, such as installing software to be accessible to all users, disabling that damn "You've got too many icons on your desktop" message and dozens of other annoyances, I decided a WinXP computer was not for me and instead kept my older machine.

Of course, I do understand that some people need certain features that are available only in better operating systems, but let's face it: productivity software has very little new to offer, and sticking to an older version is not only cheaper, but also more efficient, as the user is already used to that particlular interface and features.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[Apreche]

Suprisingly, they can do a lot with Apple //cs. There are many physics peripherals and applications for the apple. Vernier software used to make a lot of stuff for the thing, now they've moved on, but the old stuff still works. And your school probably still has those old 5.25" disks that work just fine. I say sure, an apple //c is old and slow. But it works just fine for the applications the physics class is using them for. Why replace them with pcs? The apples are so less prone to problems because they are so much more simple. The worst you get it a broken disk or disk drive, and then you just replace it for next to nothing.

I think the problem here is that people have stuff that's more than they need. The apple ][gs from 1986 is capable of doing everything the average person does with their pc. So when someone has A Pentium 4 with winxp to run Word I hang my head in disbelief. They only need maybe a Pentium 2 with 98 SE. Companies that think about saving money and actually have brains keep the old stuff that works. Don't upgrade if you don't have to. And if you are just doing office work like word processing and nothin cpu intensive then you should have an old slow machine. It's cost effective. And odds are if the machine is that old and still around it's high quality and wont give you as much technical troubles.

As a free lance, computer repair guy...

[clifgriffin]

Windows 98 is 70% of why I have a job.

If companies realized just how much money they dump into fixing all of the problems Windows 98 is privy to, they'd all be on Windows XP.

When I upgrade users to Windows 2000/XP I immediately stop getting Operating System related calls. Suddenly my only work is occassional malware, "my network is down", etc..

Windows 98 is a horrible product, and it's a liability to most small businesses. Most of my clients would have saved hundreds of dollars to make the jump.

Clif

Some companies rely on particular apps

[f1ipf10p]

I know of a few insurance companies that still rely primarily on a DOS based application that they continue to run under Win98 or Win95.

One still uses DOS 6.22 on 486 based PC's for a few of their users.

I have run the app in DOSEMU on Linux, but have problems with network support.

I wish they would agree to migrate to a newer app.

Re:Of course

[Div3B0mbr]

You also have to take into consideration that some large companies also don't care about IT. Try for example your second rate credit card company, or a company that may be on its way downhill. I've worked for companies where IT isn't important yet IT is what drives their business. One thing I've learned to watch out for is any company trying to run a Java solution on an AS/400... If you're that far behind the times and can't spell WebSphere than a Win2k is not something you're going to understand. Simply put, big companies don't care either because small amounts of their people ever focus on IT. Why should they? The execs already made their money.

Cost and Familiarity

[tarnin]

I work for an ISP. I see alot (well hear) of companies still running on Win95 and 98. When I ask why the answers I usually get are "Why? This is working for us just fine!" and "We would love too but shelling out thousands for new hardware, the OS, upgrading the current programs, and training just isn't worth it."

I think alot of people on /. seem to forget that a good 90% of users only know how to run certain programs in windows and thats it. Once they deviate from that, forget it, they are totally lost. The cost in training someone to use a newer OS and the programs associated it can sometimes run into the hundreds of thousands depending on the size of a company.

One other thing to keep in mind is that most mid to smaller level companies do not have onsite IT people. They will either higher outside integrators who charge by the hour or just wing it and hope that the existing set up continues to work for as long as possible. In both situations the company is very very hesident to upgrade as it will cost a ton of money to effectivly get the same results as now.

Slowly moving to 2000 and Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people I know absolutley hate xp, but are incresingly interested in the Stable Windows 2000 and Linux (on the desktop too). I have noticed many organizations I work with have bought a whole lot of new Dell Optiplexen, which has the "Designed for XP" sticker on it, and immediately Zap XP with Windows 2000, not letting have the chance to boot.

On the home side of things, many people are enquiring about Linux to install on their home machines Running Windows 98/ME/XP Home. The reaction of Seeing KDE 3.1 and seeing what a refreshing change fromg Windows have converted many. Many people have heard so much FUD about linux that they are shocked that it Works, unlike Windows XP who BSOD'd on me when I inserted my new USB digital camera, Linux on the other hand created a Disk icon on my desktop and I was able to view them with Konqueror. My old Pentium III with 64 MB much prefered it to Windows 98.

If Microsoft dares to EOL Windows 2000 to force people to use Vapourhorn, they are going to get creamed.

If Microsoft Released an Updated Version of Windows NT (not SP7 call It NT+) with bug fixes and USB/Firewire support it would make a lot of money and make lives a lot easier for companies running perfectly good hardware but not fast enough to run Windows 2000.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[orkysoft]

Because it's not profitable? I imagine the costs for producing those things is not that much lower than the costs for producing newer computers, and those newer computers sell for a whole lot more, so it only makes sense not to make the old machines anymore.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[Da Fokka]

Computers are not as important in computer science as one might think. Of course, for some technology-related courses you will need state-of-the-art, but computer science is about algorithms, structuring data and abstracting problems. Sometimes pen-and-paper will suffice but the programming you can do on a very old computer just as well as on a water-cooled Pentium-4 5000. The principles remain the same, and that's what matters.

Re:NT popular in the enterprise

[doodleboy]

It's scary how many NT 4 boxes I come across in the work world. they just don't want to update, and the diff between using that and the newer offerings is huge, although so is the price.

I bet the installed base of nt4 is bigger than all later windows server installations combined. In my own case, I work at a small business with an nt4 pdc and about a half dozen 98/me clients. Microsoft did announce another year of security updates for nt4 server, but when they finally do kill support for it I'm going to say it's going to cost thousands to upgrade to Palladium or whatever it'll be called, but we can run linux for nothing. No need for licenses, no need to upgrade the p233 w/224 mb ram.

Don't laugh, it works. Despite all the whizbang marketing from Redmond, most busineses are extremely pragmatic. If all you need is a {print,file,login} server, linux will happily work on hardware later Microsoft OSes have no hope of running on.

Prediction: there'll be huge uptake of linux when Microsoft kills off support of nt4 server, because no one is going to want to take the double hit of replacing all the hardware and buying all new OS licenses. Not to mention new and different security headaches due to exponential increases in complexity, increased lock-in, restrictive EULAs, etc.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would dare say you could teach someone to be a much BETTER programmer teaching them assembler on old machines, than you could teaching them Visual Basic on a modern one.

Of course, that's my opinion, and the Visual Basic Script Kiddies will now flame me for it.

Business can stay with what they want, but

[bnet41]

Business can stay with what they want, but I wish more residental users would upgrade to XP. I do alot of tech support, for a few ISP's in my job, and residental users need to get away from the 9x kernel. While XP definetly has some problems with Worms, those are much easier to troubleshoot then some the random stuff that happens on 98. As for business, they will use whatever works. I know a few companies who have stopped Windows 2000 deployments in favor of XP. I'll be interested to see XP's adoption rate, because it really is a good O/S, as long as your patched. I'm a Macintosh fan personally, and I just find XP the closest thing to a MAC on pc hardware, though I am interested in Sun's java desktop stuff.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[fermion]

You know, you are so right. When I was in school we had old machines running old OS and we had to so everything ourselves. It was long enough ago that a lot of the fancy software was not available. One of my teachers wrote the physics simulator for the Apple, which at the time was not that old, but we had other machines that were older.

Now I see that MS is pushing licensing scheme that makes it difficult to donate old Machines. Schools don't even want the older computers because all they care about is cheap tech support and surfing the internet. How many MSCE have the depth of knowledge to work on an old DOS machine or any apple? But if I were teaching programming, I would rather have enough machines so I could have every student in the school learn the logic of programming rather than just the lucky few who signed up first. Likewise, if i were teaching math or science, i would like every team to have their own computer so that could do their demonstrations and simulations. And I would want them to be old so that is all they could do.

Of course, modern machines are necessary when you are teaching Visual Studio and MS office. For the Vocational training stuff, this is defensible. But for the more basic classes, fast machines are really just a luxury.

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[arkhan_jg]

in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with

Not if it's a reinstall it isn't. Not if it's a change of motherboard it isn't.

Also, what if you scrap one machine, and re-use its licence on another? That's made a lot harder by things like making the OEMs stick the licence number to the original machine case, and enforced limits on product activation.

There's a reason people call it the microsoft tax, it's because microsoft acts like it is owed a fee every time a machine is bought, regardless of whether it has an existing licence installed on it, or even whether it's destined to have another OS it from day 1.

As you say, WPA is truly broken, and always will be until we have
1) a police state 2) hardware under the control of the software vendor, not the hardware owner

Oh, and don't forget the fun that WPA causes for system builders. Do you pre-activate the software (which you're not supposed to do, because the user doesn't then read the EULA), or do you give the customer a machine they can't use until they have a net connection, or have to make a long phone call?

Re:Windows 98

[1000101]

I can understand when people label it the "Microsoft tax" when they can't purchase a new machine without Windows. But purchasing an upgrade to XP isn't a "tax". It's providing payment to a company in exchange for their goods because you want/need it. It's the same with purchasing Panther or purchasing a boxed set of Linux.

Win95/ office 95 still in use

[bach37]

I worked with a major corporation over the summer, with probably 40 huge offices statewide. An $80 million company. The main job for the people there is to input information from customers into a database. They all use a database program written for win 95. Yes- and all the computers use windows 95. Pentium 175(?)s I think, with 64 mb of ram. There is absolutely no need for this company to even think about upgrading, since they just do data entry.

(Or perhaps switching to a linux distro would be quite nice! It's companies like this where I think Suse or others could win over big with linux in the corporate world.)

Scott

Re:Windows 98

[ghost cat]

I use win98 on all of my VMWare installations (the host is running Linux). It's much more light (in terms of disk space / memory / cpu requirements) than the newer versions and I don't really mind its instability because 1) it's running inside the VMWare so it doesn't affect my working system and 2)I don't use it for more than 30 minutes at time (usually just to test something or other, such as viewability of some page under IE)

Inotherwords, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[TyrranzzX]

No freggin duh. The 1990's were filled with a bunch of "faster, bigger, better, smarter, k3wler. Brownnose browwnose brownnose" then oop, outta buisness. We hit a mini-depression, companies got a bit tighter, started questioning weither or not spending all that money was neccisary and many who were frugal before decided that their systems are just find and work allright now. When and if they've got the money later on, they'll upgrade and they'll do it right. The critics and wall street fanatical idiots are in their high chairs rattling their books getting all exited over a boom that'll never happen because if corperate america learned anything in the 1990's, it's that a good technician is hard to find, and that spending copious amounts of money on IT equipment that you don't need will put you out of buisness.

Eventually, computers will break down and die or get too slow for their owners needs, or finally drive them insane, and that's where I'm seeing the majority of the market coming from in the coming years; upgrades and repairs. We've got the infastructure, now we've got to maintain it. Few if anyone is going to go for bleeding edge stuff, they want perfected, mature hardware and software. We're also going to see a lot of old people working, since the baby boomers who make up a large percentage of our economy are going to go into retirement and the companies they're going to be getting pension checks from are probably going to go under.

I'v also noticed a trend in the computer industry; MS's software has been getting more expensive. In 1998, a copy of win95 went for about $99, upgrade ed of win98 $99 and full ver of win98 $149. Now, in 2003, winxp home ed costs a whopping $199, and the corp edition costs $299 which for some computers is half the price of the machine. Is longhorn going to cost $499? I MS wants to know why sales of their latest OS is dismal in the corperate and goverment enviroment, mabye it's because it's too expensive to justify.

Re:Simple reason...

[Xpilot]

You know, Linux 2.6 simply outperforms XP on similar hardware. I have an old Pentium IV 1.6 with 256 megabytes of DDR SDRAM. And I did some really cruel torture on it (in Gnome 2.4 with all the fancy effects, opened up Mozilla, Evolution, compiled gaim, turned on XMMS and watched a DivX in Mplayer... ALL AT THE SAME TIME). The OS didn't bat an eyelid. No XMMS skips, smooth video... let's see WinXP try that :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:EBay market for W2K will explode

[gnu-generation-one]

"That's really irrelevant. Either you need to have all your licensing properly sorted out, in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with, or you don't. If you don't, then you also do not mind using any of the other less-than-proper approaches to get past WPA."

This assumes that you trust Microsoft's activation servers to continue responding throughout the lifetime that you expect to use your operating system.

I just reinstalled my copy of Windows98 a few months ago. This article mentions that Windows98 is, and I quote "retired". People are comparing its level of support to AppleII's. Microsoft sound surprised that people are even still using it. This is the same retired operating system that I rely upon to run some very expensive software.

If Windows98 had activation, do you think I'd still be able to use it today?

Howabout my copy of MS-DOS 6 on the 386? If that had activation, do you think I'd still be able to run it today?

Activation isn't about license disputes, it's about forcing people into an upgrade cycle. When WindowsXP came out, I had a long think about the activation features, and decided that my upgrade cycle would be Mandrake Linux. So far, it looks like that was the right choice.

Re:Windows 98

[GoofyBoy]

>people label it the "Microsoft tax" when they can't purchase a new machine without Windows.

I don't understand this part. There are lots of places where you can buy a computer without windows installed/have to pay for it.

If you can't find a place, you are not looking or you haven't asked.

Re:NT popular in the enterprise

[bloodrose]

In alot of cases in the business world, its not just about price or features. It comes down to answering a few questions:
Does the current system work
Will the current system work in one year

If either of those are yes, and in some cases both, the will to upgrade gets shot down the tubes. It makes little to no sense to upgrade a station if it is doing its job, before the argument ever gets to money.
Features are one thing that can supercede both the Is it working / money arguments, but that is a fine like that argument walks. If a feature is desired, but not entirely needed, would in some cases, money allowing, provide the urge for upgrading, but in alot of cases just fall to the way side in the interest of office stability.

And as a tech in a PC repair shop

[kenny4269]

Most problems with PCs that I see aren't OS related, they are caused by the customer (Spyware, virus, customer "cleaning" their HD.) And as for XP being not being as vulnerable to customer mistakes or easier to fix, I DON'T BUY IT.

Win 9x at least you could get into DOS if you needed to restore files or fix the registry. You really don't have the same amount of control of XP. (And System Restore for XP, is a POS. I see more systems come in with problems AFTER someone ran System Restore.)

Re:Of course

[sharkman67]

The biggest problem is that MS changes the file formats.

Your a small business and run Win98 machines with Office 97. Good enough you would say. That is until your largest customer is sending you files done in Office XP and you can't open them. The short term answer is to call them up and ask them to save it in an older format. Boy does that make you look like a shabby outfit. The other solution is to go out and upgrade the Office suite. Which may requrire you to upgrade the OS. Of course now you are running XP on a 200 MHZ PII and it runs like crap.

I think as a home user you can get away with an older OS but it is difficult to as a business.

Children are not the only '98 target...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

I use it on my PARENTS computer, a top of the line k6-350 with about 180Mo RAM.
It took me years to get my father from Multiplan under DOS to Excel with Win98. And some more to get my father trained to 98.

For the sake of my Sanity (already quite low), I don't want to retrain my father to use XP or 2000.

+It just works !!! I don't upgrade what's not broken...(yet...8) I mean I don't fiddle with the computer, and neither do they ...)

Of course, if my parent where to get a P4 (or, more likely, an AMD XP) I might get to install XP or 2000 for them. and get a new Debian server to replace my poor P200 for free...>

Don't tempt me, you insensitive clod 8p

Re:Windows 98

[blankmange]

Or haven't built their own...

Re:Quantum Leap?

[spinkham]

Oh, just little things like being 10 times more stable, having a much better way to run services, and in genereal being a real OS. Not too many sexy new capabilities, but it's a SO much nicer user experience then any previous version of windows(and in my experience, then XP too..)

Re:you can run netscape in winxp?

[dirk]

90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame.

This is very true and I think it will come back and bite Linux in the ass eventually. Most people switching to Linux from MS right now are knowledgable. They are the people that know how to set up a proper network and keep it running. As the common people switch to Linux, they will encounter many of the same problems they encountered on Windows, except they won't have any idea how to deal with them. They will end up switching back to their Windows boxes because they at least have an idea how to deal with things on that.

I think we'll see a lot of people switch to Linux, but then we'll see a decent portion of them switch back as they realize their problems weren't caused by MS, but by their own lack of knowledge.

Re:Windows 98

[geeber]

And I would like to respectfully disagree with you.

There are many industries out there which drop support for obselete products as they age. Just recently I needed to have an old oscilloscope serviced - the company no longer supported it so I needed an independant service company to fix it. Also not long ago, I found out that the music keyboard that I play in my band was no longer supported by the company that built it. So the phenomena of obsoleting old products is not unique to Microsoft.

And to expect an OS written in 1988 to work on new hardware 6 years later, and also to expect the company that wrote that operating system to support it on the ever increasing multitude of possible configurations is, IMHO, unreasonable.

In this case, I don't think you can reasonably use the word tax, even loosely.

Of course if Microsoft made the source code of Windows 98 available, so that independant companies could provide the support that Microsoft doesn't want to, it would take the sting out of this announcement for a lot of people.

Not XP, 2K

[MsGeek]

Windows 2000 is usually better than XP on machines like these. I run Win2K as part of a dual-boot with Linux on my ThinkPad 600E (PII 400MHz 224MB RAM) and it is as comfortable as a broken-in pair of jeans. This includes Avast Antivirus, ZoneAlarm and the Palm Sync Link.

2000 is what the 600E was designed for. It shows in how well it performs. I'm sure if you killed a lot of eye candy XP would be just as nice, but I'm lazy.

Linux also runs beautifully on this machine...this was the one and only machine IBM was going to get certified for Red Hat Linux. It's running Knoppix/Debian and very happy.

Re:Windows 98

[trashmanal]

There's a problem here. There ARE NO independent service firms that you can go to to fix problems in an older version of Windows like there is for your oscilloscope.

Also, your oscilloscope actually broke. My Windows 98 hasn't broke, it's still working, it's just now unsupported.

And it's not really obsolete. There are still VERY few software applications out there that won't work on my Windows 98 machine.

The only reason it's "obsolete" is because Microsoft is trying to make it so.

Good Enough.

[Big Sean O]

Most home users don't twaddle with operating systems. Ever. My mother bought a computer over 5 years ago and she hasn't updated the OS. I doubt she ever will.

Most very small businesses do the same thing. My dry cleaner has a 486 running a DOS-based database program that keeps track of my drycleaning. I remember using something very similar on a job in 1988.

Many companies don't bother going with the latest and greatest. It's just not worth it to churn their computers and operating software every 2-3 years. Unless they're in IT, it doesn't matter much which version of MS Office they're using.

Tribute money

[Latent Heat]

I prefer to call payment for such things "tribute money" - site licenses, royalties, upgrade charges. I count as tribute money any and all fees paid for things on account of "intellectual property" (OK already, patents, copyright and trademark laws then).

Spare me the explanations of the poor starving software developers; I am fully aware that a software developer seeks renumerations for one's labors, and charging license fees and upgrade fees is a way to amortize the effort required to develop a complex piece of software. That doesn't change the fact that license fees are a kind of economic rent (i.e. money you can rake in because the law grants you a limited monopoly -- you can say that software won't get developed in the absence of such a monopoly, but that doesn't change the material facts that "intellectual property" law has the intent of granting limited monopolies to facilitate collecting economic rents).

I prefer the term tribute money to "Microsoft tax" because "tax" suggests governmental power and some sense of the consent of the governed. Microsoft is not to be dignified by considering it a government -- it is more like such extragovernmental entities such as high-seas pirates, Mafia bosses, feudal lords, and Delaware corporations in that money payed to them to avoid punishment (i.e. lawsuits, getting wacked) is to be called tribute and not a tax.

I also differ with the common usage of "pirate" to denote someone who avoids paying tribute money. I use the term "pirate" to describe contruction contractors that you bring into your house for remodeling and repair work. The reason contractors are pirates has less to do with the amount of money you pay them than the part about when you let them into your house they control every aspect of your life. Yes, it is about the money because whatever contract you sign, there is some uncontrolled eventuality that you have to agree to spending more money once work commences, but even if you are rich enough that the money spent is a minor concern, you become their pirate-hostage regarding letting them in and out of the house at their whim and work schedule.

So construction contractors are pirates simply on the basis that their clients are pirate hostages, and money spent for the XP upgrade when 98 was working just fine for you, thank you, is tribute money.

Re:Windows 98

[Simonetta]

There are a number of applications which I run,and I'm not just talking about games, which will not run under Win NT or 2000 at all.

I agree with that. I have a topographical map program that I often use that won't run at all on any system except Win98. Plus many of the CD-ROMs still on the shelves of the local library won't run on any system newer than Win98.

Plus Win98 is the last MS offering that allows a user to directly access input/output ports. I still have a few ten year old ISA PC cards that interface electronics to PCs. The control programs for these cards directly access I/O as they were written in DOS in most cases. Without Win98, they are useless.

The concept that millions of people are just going to throw away the equipment that they have bought five to ten years ago because of an arbitrary decision of one company in the support chain is simply corporate arrogance.

If Microsoft is no longer going to support an operating system that is still used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, then they should release the source code for this operating system.

Re:Companies are better off than schools.

[Skim123]

I don't think it's the university's responsibility to teach their CS students the architectural layout of a motherboard. These things change over time. When I was in undergrad for the hardware class, we used a standard hardware book (Patterson and Hennessey, IIRC), and the book then was about five years out of date with the hardware they had pictures of and were discussing (might have been an outdated version at the time, don't recall).

What is needed, is to have students with an enthusiasm for computers. I think the dot com boom rushed in a lot of people who "learned computers" because they wanted a good job, not because they liked computers. A good computer scientist will know where the RAM is in a motherboard - namely, what sticks of RAM look like - not because he will have had a class where they had to assemble a computer from scratch, but because in his personal interest he's taken the time to upgrade his memory, or to build a computer from the ground up, or to just take the damn case off to see what it looks like inside. Personally, I did all of these things back in my high school days, and the good computer scientists I've met at both my undergrad and grad schools did the same.

While I think it important the universities teach both theoretical and concrete concepts, I think it the hallmark of a good student to take an interest in the concepts outside of class. A university can only provide so much information - the rest is up to the student to hunt out himself.

Windows XP is not as easily pirated.

[nuckfuts]

It's no surprise to me that relatively few corporate desktops are running XP. You have to activate every copy! Yes, a few volume license keys were leaked that will get you a non-expiring illicit installation of XP but you can't apply certain updates (such as SP1) with them.

Compare that to Windows 98, 98SE, Me and 2000 where nothing stops you from borrowing a CD and installing it on every desktop in your organization with the same CD Key.