On Tuesday 11 July 2006 15:16, Tom Potts wrote:
DON'T BUY WINXP!!! Just cos its not supported doesn't mean it'll stop
working!
Sorry, but what amazingly bad advice.
Sure, you don't have buy Windows XP, but that doesn't mean you need to
continue using a buggy, security hole ridden OS.
Using the age old car analogy: Would you advise someone to continue using a
car without a seatbelt? assuming they were not a legal requirement, of
course.
If you want to stick with using windows, then DO move to XP as soon as you
can. Alternatively buy a mac, or move to linux. even if you move to win2k,
fine. just whatever you move to:
-----> KEEP YOUR MACHINE UPDATED <-----
... and this is why you should no longer use 98 or ME. because there are no
updates. People can now exploit it, safe in the knowledge MS will not release
any more updates. Absolutely perfect for spammers, scammers, and hackers.
Even better for them, it doesn't come with the "seatbelts" that 2k and XP now
do.
If you do continue using win 98, then do not connect to the internet (for all
of our sanity), or expect application upgrades to continue working for much
longer. If you do continue using it, every time you get a piece of spam,
then remember: people whole followed this advice are one of the reasons you
are getting that piece of spam in the first place. If you suffer from
credit/debit card fraud, then remember: the advice to continue using windows
98 was almost certainly the reason (or your lack of common sense).
Banks are 100% right to not support people running security risks to use their
services - it encourages people to upgrade, something that is really badly
needed.
We're becoming very tempted to stop people accessing our services using a
known security risk browser (ffx pre 1.5.4 on windows for example, or
un-patched IE with certain XSS vunls). It is just as tempting now to tell
customers using windows 98 or ME to go to a competitor instead - we don't
want to deal with the hassle they cause us, and themselves. After all, they
are entering credit card details - why should we help someone malicious gain
those details?
I stopped supporting windows 98 as a target platform the moment Microsoft
EOL'ed it. And it could not have come sooner. The crap TCP/IP API, lack of
Services, crap USB implementation, crap thread implementation, and numerous
other things wrong with this absolutely awful OS (from a developers point of
view) made it one of the happiest days of my life to remove Windows 98 + ME
from my supported OS list.
~ Theo
No, no, no! Once again do not move to XP. If you have programs that
need to be run on windows for whatever reason then you can run them
reasonably safely off the net or behind a firewall. 