Windows 98 Critical Updates and June 30th 2006 cut off date.Really going to happen? How critical is this?

Nate Goulet wrote:
Windows 98 Critical Updates and June 30th 2006 cut off date. Really
going to happen? How critical is this?

Still have several networked Windows 98SE machines at a small
company, in addition to XP machines. All of the machines feature a
corporate anti-virus scanner, etc. Network is protected by a Cisco
Firewall.

Will keeping these machines on the network leave new security holes?
Most of Microsoft's critical updates seem to be for IE6 more than
anything.

These machines still suit our needs fine, so I'd hate to have to
replace them all just because of new security issues. Most of them
are 600 mhz, 128 megs ram. Our applications require more like 166
mhz, 32 megs of ram, etc. Too old to be worth investing in XP, but so
far we have yet to find a good reason to replace them.

Some of the machines do surf the web, usually with FireFox, check
e-mail, etc. I can handle a machine here and there getting infected,
but i'm more concerned about a network wide attack, and most
importantly our Windows 2000 server.

What are other small companies doing about the June 30th issue?

Thanks for any advice.



I added the 98 general newsgroup. Hopefully, they can give you some advice.

Nate Goulet wrote:

Windows 98 Critical Updates and June 30th 2006 cut off date.
Really going to happen? How critical is this?

Micro$haft wants you to be in a panic over this. They hope it will
have people like you in a mad rush to replace win-98 with XP.

Milkro$oft has a lot of XP sitting on the shelves, and they want to
sell them before they dump XP and move to Vista. Then they'll start a
campaign telling you that XP is really really old, antiquated and
buggy, and that you need to move to Vista.

What are other small companies doing about the June 30th issue?

We'll be using 98 until it's 2098.

We don't fall for Macro$haft's FUD.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Windows 98:
Its a really good time to look into the other options, Linux has come
a long way over the last few years, and there are less driver problems
now(usb's. cameras etc are usually plug and play now) Its completely
free(great news for business) and virus free!
over 400 different flavours see www.distrowatch.com

The open office suite is completely compatable with microsoft
office(you can even save documents in microsoft format if you wish)

Linux OPerating systems like Mepis and PCLinuxOS are best for
beginners, (These ones are live cds, so you can test them out on your
equipment first before installing)

I prefer Ubuntu myself, I run it on a pentium 2 with 256 ram(needs
128mb) but you can get a variant called xbuntu which runs on lesss ram.
For very old computers, there is Puppy linux that looks like windows
95, or damn small linux for 486 systems