Win95 Lifecycle Draws to a Close

Mr_Perl writes "As many Everquest players discovered recently directx 8.1 is not being made for Windows 95, sending stores everywhere into a frenzy to slap little stickers over the words "Windows 95" on game box system requirements sections. Microsoft has picked November 30th, 2001 as the date that Win95 moves into the unsupported phase of it's career, making it even more useless to those who still keep it around for playing the latest games. Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003."

damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

once Win2k is unsupported, it's product activation time for everyone

why bash microsoft for this?

[jopet]

if people wouldnt rush out and buy XP like mad
MS couldnt stop supporting older versions that
easily. the majority of people doesnt seem to
have a problem with activation, doesnt seem to
have a problem with higher costs, huge required
diskspace, enforced digital rights management,
sloppy support for MP3, discontinued support
for older games and applications and more.
its similar to politics: people get the politicians they vote for and they get the
OS they buy.

Re:Why is this news?

[twilightzero]

Point taken, however you're missing some critical pieces of info in your argument.

The biggest one is that the Win32 API has not changed since it came out with Win95. The system organization and a number of other things have, but that's stayed the same. That's why all the stuff that says "Reuqires Windows 98 or higher" on the box will all still run in Win95. There are a number of applications out there that require NT or 2000, but I believe that's more for organizational/security reasons rather than API incompatability and many of them you CAN get to work on Win95 with a bit of hacking. Linux, however, has had MANY feature changes, evern major revision of the kernel, and therefore supporting new apps on the old version would become increasingly difficult.

The other point is that Microsoft is a HUGE worldwide monolithic monopolistic corporation (not slamming, just using the words that best describe it) and also has great profit margins and INCREDIBLE sales. The amount it would cost them to support old OS'es compared to the profit they make on new sales is fairly insignificant, especially considering that to have a support contract with M$ is prohibitively expensive for any OS they make/have made. Linux is supported and developed by a worldwide loosely knit group of developers and hackers that has constantly shifting membership. Many OSS/Linux projects do make at least some attempt to support multiple kernel revisions/etc. but for many of them the effort would be just way too much, i.e. grokking 10,000 lines of code someone else wrote 3 years ago and didn't comment at all.

Re:Support for MS OSes?

[mattACK]

One of my old coworkers at a previous job supported WIndows for Workgroups 3.11. Really challenging from what she said. The support issues with that OS were ironed out YEARS ago. Nowadays it takes little more than a good support script to read off to satisfy the vast majority of Windows 3.1x issues. (She and her coworkers used to play Frisbee while on calls. Just a long cord, wide aisles, and hours of fun. Fun yah!) Plus the new software/hardware market for Windows 3.1x is dormant at best.

On the other hand, Windows95 systems have many more capabilities and require actual human beings to troubleshoot and whatnot.
So considering how much more money the must be losing to support Windows95, and how cheaply Windows 3.1x can be supported, it probably makes sense in a capitalist way.
Course, I could be reading too much into it.

Re:This is not very good.

[kfg]

Your analogy is flawed. What MS is doing is more the equivilant of not making parts to upgrade a '95 Mustang to '02 specs.

Ford makes parts for '95 Mustangs because, (A) They make a profit by selling them, and (B) The market for the parts is there because the original parts have worn out.

None of your Windows 95 code has ceased to function because of wear through use.

Now, I don't happen to like what MS is doing here, and my turn will come when they drop support for Win98, which I have no desire to upgrade, but my Win98 OS will keep operating.

Now when the PC manufacturers stop making hardware it will run on, THEN I'm screwed. I only retired my 8088 Compaq transportable running DOS 5 a couple of years ago. Not because it didn't fulfill the functions that I required of it, but because I couldn't find a replacement for a floppy drive.

KFG

Re:Planned obsolescence

[John_Booty]

Well, similarly, there are a whole lot of people out there who have a Win9x OS installed, and a bunch of apps that work reasonably well with it, and they'd be quite happy to keep using it. But M$ has decided to discontinue support for Win9x, so in effect, they've decided for the user what they should use.

I'm sorry, but this is totally ridiculous. How are they deciding what the user can't use? It's not like Win95 is not going to work anymore (well, whether it worked or not in the first place is debatable, but that's another post) once it's unsupported, it just means they're not going to patch it anymore. You can use Win95 for the next 50 years if you like, they're just not making new stuff for it.

Sega hasn't "supported" the Genesis/Megadrive in six or seven years, but I can fscking well still play it! Or should they be obligated to keep making new stuff for it, as you seem to be insinuating Microsoft ought to be doing for Win95? Considering how outdated Win95 is at this point, I'm suprised they supported it this long.

Why are people still using it?

[Bob_Robertson]

Win95 was the last version of Windows I could make work the way I wanted it to.

It's also the last version I will ever have bought.

I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.

If Microsoft, as a corporation, were capable of asking themselves such questions, they wouldn't be Microsoft.

Newer! Slower! Bigger! Less Modular! More Microsoft!

Bob-

Re:Isnt non NT (win32) all the same anyway?

[John_Booty]

why would something work on one win32 distro and not on another?

You hit the nail on the head, actually. The base API is the basically the same across versions. So something like, say, a word processor should run on any win32. But it's the "bells, whistles, and included driver support" that prove to be the sticking points... a lot of the fun stuff (games and other multimedia) uses these bells and whistles, as does anything that accesses the hardware directly (drivers, cd burning, etc etc).

Re:Why cry?

[Bi()hazard]

Actually, 95 is still rather useful. Aside from avoiding the cost of buying 98 (unless of course you steal it, gasp!) 95 contains fewer of the unnecessary extras that can get in the way. Believe it or not, some games actually run slightly faster under 95 than 98 on my couple years old PIII. You might argue that the difference is minor, but if they're so close why discontinue support for 95 now? They want to sell more 98's, and they know people don't want the upgrade if they have any choice.

In addition, quite a few of the older systems out there are a little quirky-they're happy with the factory default 95, but they don't work well if you try to install 98. Those systems might not need DirectX8.1, but unsupported means unsupported. Eventually MS's forced upgrades will render such systems useless as new versions of critical apps, such as explorer, are designed specifically not to work on older versions of windows. Why should a terminal used only for checking email and browsing the web require the latest hardware?

That's not all, MS has also announced they plan to drop support for 98 in 2003. That's only a year and a half away. ME was released in fall 2000-less than 3 years before it becomes the only supported non-XP non-2k version of windows. That's right, in a year and a half MS will all but kill legacy windows boxes. With a new generation of hardware out and the move towards XP and 2k, expect the latest games to give up on nonXP/2k windows shortly after 98 dies.

Re:Support for MS OSes?

[Stormie]

It's not that odd, since everything that can run W95 can run W98 too, IOW there is no reason not to upgrade from W95 to W98.

How about not wanting to spend $106.99 [amazon.com] upgrading a shitty installation that's only there so I can play some Windows games?

Kinda a shame...

[Knile]

Windows95 was a huge step for the Windows world (note I didn't say computing world), and I bet most Windows people's memories for their OSes aren't even 3 years long. It's going to go out without much of a funeral, which is interesting, because it helped a lot of people "get into" computers, myself included.

Don't forget your roots.

Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque

[1u3hr]

I haven't seen a registry corruption in years (not since win95, actually). And the reason for that was me mucking around in regedit before I had an idea of what I was doing. Otherwise, smooth sailing all the way.

I've reinstalled Win98SE twice because of registry rot, and now again there are weird things happening that are impossible to localise. You could assume I'm a moron, of course.

In my mind, the registry is better than a pant load of .ini files. Everything's in one place, so you know that if you need to find something, you just have to fire up regedit (and the trees are generally setup pretty logically, though you can't fault Microsoft for idiot third-party developers).

So as long as you only install MS products you'll be fine. I CAN blame MS for creating a system that crashes if you dare to install products from other companies.

I'd MUCH rather have a pantsload of ini files. Then I can sort them by date and find the most recently changed ones and fix/delete/restore them. I use an installer tracker and find the average large app inserts hundreds of entries in the registry, many just cryptic strings. It's beyond human understanding.

Re:Support can't last forever

[Rogerborg]

• Backwards compatibility is a requirement in the commercial software world

Uh, backwards compatibility generally means that new OS releases will run old apps, and new apps will use old file formats. Microsoft doesn't break this (much). They're saying that new apps won't work on old OS's and new file formats won't work in old apps. I'm not their biggest fan, but I think the killing of support for Win95 is pragmatism, not malice.

Re:Id get ready

[codetalker]

The Desktop market is still Microsoft's big money earner. I think Office is their best selling product. I wouldn't discount Microsoft's belief that if people are going to buy PCs to play games, they had better buy the one that can run them all since its got their proprietary directX.

I think Directx was made to kill OpenGl and and attract developers away from more portable, less proprietary systems. I mean c'mon, the only reason linux isn't on the desktop is a lack of good games. Most Godlike PCs are purchased for playing games among other things. Otherwise we'd still have 486 terminals doing everything in textmode.

Re:The End of my Windows eXPerience, I guess...

[ewhac]

You'll only worry about the activation process if you're running a pirated copy or lack the basic social skills to speak to an activation agent on the phone.

You're missing the point: It's none of their damn business.

Once they sold me the copy, the business relationship is at an end. Who I am, whether or not I install it, my hardware configuration, and any future hardware upgrades are my business and mine alone.

Even if you're not an adherent of the classic value of MYOB, I simply don't trust them. Microsoft has shown again and again that it is not a trustworthy entity. I don't trust them as a business, and I don't trust their products to not defecate all over themselves at the first opportunity, destroy my data, or cede control of my machine to a hostile third party.

Now they're insisting that I offer to them as tribute my personal information (what, the $200 they soaked me for wasn't enough?). The justification for this is to thwart "piracy," to which they claim to "lose" billions of dollars a year. Yet, somehow, the company continues to post record earnings quarter after quarter.

Sorry, I'm not buying it for one nanosecond. Their alleged excuse doesn't stand scrutiny and -- even if it were legitimate -- it doesn't change the fact that it's none of their damn business.

Schwab

Re:the blight is really bloat

[brshuttleworth]

Ho hum.

I don't have the Karma around to burn on this, but there are about a thousand different things wrong with that description of the situation

And before anyone tar's and feather's me for supporting Microsoft, note that I use Debian for Everything - I have 2K hidden on a partition that's getting dusty in case someone releases a cool game.

Now:

1. If you want to make sweeping statements about bloatware, try comparing apples and oranges: Win95's compact install will probably be just about as useful as installing just the kernel and the absolute base on Linux: Can be done in under 10 Megs, and if you just want to see a blinking prompt it will probably suit you just fine.
2. On the other hand, the WinXP install (with all components) clocks in at 1.5 Gigs. Debian comes (compressed) on 6 CD's last time I installed from CD (apt-get and .edu networks rule :) ) - with all components, this kind of thinking could lambaste (sp?) Linux as bloatware.
3. All those components may contain lots of bugs, but they also contain a fairly solid number of features that people need / want: people want a browser (that it sucks and kills competition is another discussion entirely), a cd-writer, a music thingy ...

So the sad, truth of the matter is that yes, Microsoft sucks. And yes, I will never install XP. But to call it bloatware because it takes 1.5 Gigs to install (and then to refer to that as a "windowmanager") is somewhat misleading.

Not all users are computer professionals

[Godwin O'Hitler]

I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
Come on now, have a guess yourself why people are still using Win 95.
Could it be something to do with not paying $$$$$ to replace something they're quite happy with? There are believe it or not some people out there who are quite happy with win 95. They ask no more from a computer than to be good at simple word processing. Their idea of a good game is minesweeper. They don't spend their time on the internet; they spend it going out with friends.
It's nothing to do with Microsoft's shortcomings in their later products; hell, most of these people don't even know what an OS is - and there's no reason they should!
I don't know how well they'll get along without support though...

Corporations Still Use Win95

[north.coaster]

MS's decision to drop support for Win95 is not surprising, but that does not mean that everyone will immediately rush to the store (or to their IT support group) looking to upgrade. For example, according to a recent article by GartnerGroup, there are still a lot of large corporations using Win95 as their standard desktop OS. I've talked to some corporate IT folks about this, and I believe that there are a couple reasons why they hae not already upgraded:

1. Win95 works. Most office workers don't need anything more than Win95 and Office95. Since it meets their needs, why spend the thousands of dollars that it would cost to buy new software?

2. The effort to migrate thousands of desktops is expensive (advocates of the Linux desktop should remember this). Remember that this is a manual process. So again, don't do it unless it's really necessary.

3. These companies figured out a long time ago how to run Win95 in a stable, reliable way, so they don't need support from MS.

A lot of the desktop hardware that is still running Win95 won't support the newer OSes. As that hardware gets replaced, the final death of Win95 in the corporate environment will begin. But it will take a couple years.

/Don

Can't happen quickly though...

[Junta]

The lifecycle on their products is relatively long and overlay a great deal. As such, even though Windows 95 is officially unsupported, they still must support Windows 98, which was compatible with Windows 95 nearly completely. They are still stuck with the win32 API. When 2003 rolls around and Win98 is axed, then WinME will carry the support, then when ME is axed, XP will be supported, etc....
Though they can make minor changes, but for now backwards compatibility prevents them from axing any backwards compatiblity.
The problem for Wine remains the same, the API is huge and not well documented, and while not deprecating calls, they are still adding calls every release. As far as releases not being made with Win95 in mind by 3rd party companies, that has been and will remain their pergative. Some already say "no, we don't support that" Others will continue to test against it even if MS says it's unsupported.
Wine is catching up really fast, and the Win32 API is changing slowly (not a bad thing). I doubt MS sees Wine as that much of a threat right now. Wine is only useful for Desktop-level applications, and MS's only real threat is in the server arena, where all applications are run natively and thus wine becomes a moot point. The relatively small segment of Desktop linux users doesn't cut much into MS's bottom line. That's the whole deal with the .NET strategy, leveraging the Desktop dominance to get more major companies running .NET servers...

Amazing, isn't it?

[HMV]

People will bring servers to their knees to get the latest one-line change to the Linux kernel, and yet they'll run a mid-1990s version of the Windows lines and wonder why they have trouble.

Re:Amazing, isn't it?

[bribecka]

People will bring servers to their knees to get the latest one-line change to the Linux kernel, and yet they'll run a mid-1990s version of the Windows lines and wonder why they have trouble.

Seriously, if Win95 was released 8/24/95, do you realize what version of the Linux kernel was released just 4 days later, on 8/28/95?

1.3.21 [memalpha.cx]

Is anyone here running that version of the kernel? If you don't want problems with Windows, the least you can do (besides not using it at all) is to use a relatively current version). I can only imagine the flaming if someone was on here complaining that their 1.3.21-based distribution had problems with their new hardware.

Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque

[Ivan Raikov]

Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems. Not that 2000 doesn't have any problems, but it is a much, much better OS and the problems are fewer and farther between.

That's what everbody used to say about NT 3.51, then 4.0... Supposedly it was going to "revolutionarize the way we do computing," or some such crap, very similar to the XP propaganda.

And you know what? Back in 1998, I tried to install NT on a machine that had Linux, SCO OpenServer, and Windows 95 on it. The Windows installation program wiped out my entire partition table, then said there was some kind of error and it couldn't continue (and it only gave an error code, it's not like it actually explained what the error was).

This product, my friend, is below any conceivable standards of software quality and engineering. I haven't used any MS junk since the above incident, and I've been happily running Linux with 12-15 months uptime on average, and unparalleled flexibility and robustness.

Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque

[sphealey]

No wonder everyone here hates MS so much--the article talks about Win95, you're using Win98SE. Trust me, THOSE SUCK. Win95 sucks, 98 sucks, 98SE sucks, ME is probably the worst of all of them.

Actually, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 wasn't a bad home/light duty corporate/laptop system.

Which points out one of my real peeves about Microsoft: at a certain point they stop releasing service packs and patches, and start releasing changes to the OS using all sorts of sneaky non-documented methods. If you were an OEM and had access to OSR 2.5, great. But if you were a home user of W95, after Service Pack 1 (W95 SP2 being basically useless) you were out of luck. Same with NT 4 today: where is Service Pack 7?

sPh

I'm sure microsoft cares

[eclectric]

Not that I disagree with you. I would have left the windows world years ago if I had to pay for their damn upgrades. However, the University I'm at has Pact, so I pay $5 for upgrades to windows and can download upgrades to office, so the impetous to move to something else isn't as high for me.

But you must remember, this is the same company that got a huge backlash from the technical community (including its own ass-kissers) about Product Activation and it basically just said "fuck em"

Microsoft is successful because it knows how to appeal to and stay in the good graces of the masses. What the technically elite think matters little to them.

Re:Does this add any rights?

[wendy]

After the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, corporate copyrights last 95 years from the work's creation. "Effectively forever" when it comes to software, but not based on the lifetime of the corporation.

See this app [harvard.edu] for a demonstration how little present value Sonny's extra 20 years adds.

Re:Amazing, isn't it?

[bribecka]

When I buy software, I expect it to keep working.

Is this a serious statement? I don't think any of the old win95 software is going to stop working. If you're talking about free upgrades, what you paid $100 for in 1995 isn't what they're selling in 2001 (not just MS, any company). I can imagine you going into a car dealership now--"Hey, my '85 Honda Civic didn't come with a CD player like you have now--I want mine for free! I paid good money for this car."

Re:damn...

[Tackhead]

> Planned obsolescence is Microsoft's new model. If the old system does everything it needs to, nobody will upgrade.

So true.

Just for a lark, I installed Win3.1 and '95B on a ~1GHz, 7200RPM drive, 256M, decently-high-end machine.

Holy fsck, it boots fast. 3.1 in less than a second. Win95B took up less than 100M when all the extraneous crap was configured out of the install.

Side note on the Registry. Is it just me, or is a good portion of "boot time" reading in the 7-8M of fragmented files that USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT become after a few months?

I suspect defragging doesn't work, because the files are in use during defragging, and many defraggers (with good reason) ignore system/hidden/readonly files.

I concur with the "gimme 1000 .ini files any day" approach. Put the config files (and any custom DLLs) in the application's directory, where they belong. I should be able to "uninstall" an application by merely deleting a directory tree.