Should MS continue to support those elderly operating systems?
Win 98 is about eight years old. The thing is that losing support for
an OS doesn't mean that you can't continue to use it, but if you use
it while in the internet there are security concerns. When I was a
broadcaster we assumed that companies that built broadcast equipment
would support it for at least ten years, that meant mostly providing
replacement parts. And thus allowing the user to continue using a
radio transmitter or an audio console for at least that long. Given
the investment that a station made in those devices it made sense
that they should get support for as long as ten years.
The main claim that those who think that an OS company should
continue to support their product is that of security. The OS is the
main security component on a computer, and security holes in the OS
are why the bad guys can get on a computer. But consider this. When
lead free gasoline came along many cars were not designed to use that
fuel. Should the car company have been expected to provide an engine
mod to take care of that unanticipated event? People like to trash MS
for the insecurity in Windows. But no one could have anticipated how
many security pot holes would develop on the internet. And one point
that I recently read about is that much of the software currently in
use depends on features of Windows that are also available to those
who would break into computers. This writer's point was that he did
not expect to see any significant security improvements in Vista for
that reasons because fixing those 'holes' would 'break' much of the
software extant in computer land.
I think that what we need is legacy free computers. And that is not
likely to happen any time soon.
Jim
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