98 Farewells
Windows 98 reached the end of it’s support yesterday. Big frickin’ deal, right? Everyone should move to a more modern operating system.
The Windows 9x line (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE and Windows ME) was rather long in the tooth, not overly secure, extremely hard to support, a pain in the butt to use, and generally a nuisance. Most people SHOULD have moved on to Windows XP. In fact, the majority of people have - or had been forced to - when they bought a new computer.
So how am I celebrating this momentous event? I’m at a client’s site right now, re-installing a hosed Win98 system.
That’s right, the day it’s retired, I’m re-installing the very OS.
Win98 is far from the best Windows ever - although I think general agreement is that 98SE was the best of the 9x line. My personal favourite remains Windows 2000 to this very day. XP has it’s charms, but it’s also a headache in it’s own way. “There’s things I like, and there’s things that drive me crazy,” said my client over my shoulder. Win2003 is decent enough to work with at work, but I’m not going to run out to get a copy for my poor ol’ P3-450 at home. I’m dreading the arrival of Vista - all the “good stuff” I was looking forward to has been dropped and I get to look forward to a new interfact to baffle me.
I’m typing this via Knoppix 3.8 - I should probably upgrade - which I’m using to back up her hard drive until I get her back up and operating. “Oh!” she says, “It’s got very pretty buttons. What’s the penguin do?”
I swear, she’ll be running Ubuntu on this thing one of the days in the near future. Probably once I have her email migrated off of Outhouse Express….