installing Win 98 SE on a laptop manufactured in '04

I have been using an old Pentium 2 machine with Win 98 SE for years.I
am very attached to it.I go more than 24 hours without rebooting
usually.I have an enormous number of macros and odd little apps and
things that could not readily be moved to XP. I have moved my HD or a
HD with a Ghost image of my original HD to other PCs of the P2 or P3
generation.With the Windows 98 SE CD and CDs for modems and NICs etc.
I have had no trouble simply moving the HD from one machine to
another.

I'd like to get a new laptop like an IBM Thinkpad.I'm told I couldn't
get Windows 98 or an image of my HD to run on these machines.They give
a lot of reasons,but the only one that makes sense to me is that there
would be no Windows 98 drivers for certain hardware available
anywhere.

I'm wondering if anyone has had any experiences with this and if there
are any workarounds if you really want a legacy OS that's no longer
supported by hardware maunfacturers or MS on a new computer.

For example are there any little cult like websites where people who
are Win 98 fans (like Linux fans)have written drivers for new
hardware,or list which new machines are Win 98 friendly? Could you
count on being able to boot win98 without NIC and sound cards etc.
support at least to a safe mode like level.Then maybe you could
install older components as necessary.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Please don't ask the same question in several newsgroups as it make more
work for everyone. If you question is relevant is several places then
crosspost instead.

Answered in gen_disucssion.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Dingell Norwood" wrote in message
m...
I have been using an old Pentium 2 machine with Win 98 SE for years.I
am very attached to it.I go more than 24 hours without rebooting
snip