And if you haven't been Preparing for the end of Windows 98 & Windows ME [webmasterworld.com] perhaps there are some tidbits in that thread that will help!

That 70 million are going to become prime targets for hacking. Once an exploit is found it will be exploitable forever.

At some point we will need to be blocking these systems from websites on a security basis, i.e. a login from a 98 machine will be likely to be key-logged or otherwise insecure, exposing internal data to anyone.

Here are the User Agent strings as supplied by Microsoft for ME, 98 and 95.

Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90 - Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) 
Windows 98 - Windows 98 
Windows 95 - Windows 95 

That 70 million are going to become prime targets for hacking. Once an exploit is found it will be exploitable forever.

Pulling support I can see, but stopping issuance of plugs for security holes in their products that people bought in good faith and many still need to use is unconscionable and tasteless.

[edited by: Marcia at 3:26 am (utc) on July 12, 2006]

Microsoft revealed a while back that sales of XP has fallen far short of expectations. I can only imagine that pulling support for 98 and ME makes Vista seam a lot more appealing for some.

Mack.

Support is also ending for XP SP1 which seemed a little bizarre. XP is still a supported OS yet support for one of its biggest service packs isn't.

XP SP1 is still supported until October 10, 2006. MS made notifications quite a way back that this particular Service Pack would not be supported for long.

That 70 million are going to become prime targets for hacking. Once an exploit is found it will be exploitable forever.

Pulling support I can see, but stopping issuance of plugs for security holes in their products that people bought in good faith and many still need to use is unconscionable and tasteless.

are you mad they still don't make games for your atari 2600 too?

Product support DOES have to end at some point in time. Other companies do it, look at APPLE, IBM. They have all ended product support before.

Their is an awful lot of bias MS hate in this forum.

That 70 million are going to become prime targets for hacking. Once an exploit is found it will be exploitable forever.

At some point we will need to be blocking these systems from websites on a security basis, i.e. a login from a 98 machine will be likely to be key-logged or otherwise insecure, exposing internal data to anyone.

Here are the User Agent strings as supplied by Microsoft for ME, 98 and 95.
Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90 - Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me)
Windows 98 - Windows 98
Windows 95 - Windows 95

are you telling me you want to block 70,000,000 people from being able to view your website?

Blocking potential customers, hm sounds like a great idea.

[edited by: bill at 9:15 pm (utc) on July 12, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] see sticky [/edit] [/edit][/1]