Re: 2004 -Microsoft drops 9x support

From: David H. Lipman (DLipman~nospam~_at_Verizon.Net)
Date: 12/16/03 

Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:40:44 -0500

NT Server 4.0 is already reached its EoL June/July of '03.
Only Security related patches will be supplied until June of '04.

Dave

"anonymous" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0b9d01c3c363$1eb6a210$a001280a@phx.gbl...
| 8 Dec 2003 (this was last week)
|
| Sun forces final death of Win98, Office 2000, etc
| Posted by Voodoo on 08 Dec 2003 - 17:05
|
| Microsoft will pull the plugs on MSDN downloads of
| a range of products, including Windows 98, Office 2000,
| SQL Server 7 and NT Workstation, next Monday. These
| contain the polluted Java which, according to the
| settlement with Sun, Microsoft has to stop supporting.
| So it's all Sun's fault, really. Up to a point. The deal
| with Sun doesn't actually require Microsoft to completely
| kill off its JVM finally until September of next year, so
| it's clearing the decks early, and perhaps conveniently.
| The demise of Office 2000, SQL 7 and ISA Server 2000
| in particular will help usher users along the company's
| recommended upgrade paths. Microsoft will be issuing new,
| settlement compliant, versions of Office XP Pro,
| Publisher 2002, NT Server 4.0 and Small Business
| Server 2000.
|
| Officially, the issue for Microsoft is one of support
| rather than availability. Windows 98 and NT 4.0
| Workstation licences, for example, ceased to be
| offered through system builders earlier this year.
| Developers use the MSDN download facility, however,
| for support and backward compatibility purposes.
| Prudent developers will therefore be spending the
| next week grabbing images 'just in case', while the
| surreal-minded among you might care to conjure
| with the notion of Win98 ISOs showing up on P2P
| networks, with Sun lawyers in hot pursuit.
|
| Depressingly, the cull doesn't seem to cover the unlovely
| Windows ME, which only just comes out of the OEM
| channel at the end of this month, and will remain
| street-legal via the more desperate class of system
| builder for another year. You might care to note that
| here, WinXP is scheduled to be pulled out of the OEM
| channel at the end of 2005, which means that the
| lifecycle roadmappers at least are still looking for
| Longhorn in Q3-4 2005.
|
| >-----Original Message-----
| > So what does everyone think will be the effect of
| >Microsoft's decision to drop support for Win 9x in 2004
| on
| >the flood of viruses? I'm wondering if that means that
| >there will be enough systems running 9x that become
| >infected because there won't be patches for new
| >vulnerabilities, that it will create problems (traffic
| >from DOS attempts or whatever) for the users of more
| >current operating systems.
| >.
| >

Relevant Pages