Did something happene in Autum 2008 to the Win98 community?

[Multibooter]

Not in California.

Epson still support Windows 98... and on Epson site is possible to download Windows 98 drivers http://esupport.epson-europe.com/ProductHo...PV41&tc=6#7

Great info Rjecina. And great that Epson supports their Win98 customers. I had no problem getting the latest Win98 driver for the my Epson Stylus Photo 1280 from the US website, but this is apparently a US model not sold in Europe, it's not on their model list of Epson Europe at http://esupport.epson-europe.com/SupportHo...2FzEJ1ZP6LGPV41 only models 1270 and 1290 are listed.

It is very interesting that the US support page for the Epson Stylus 1400 (apparently a model sold in both markets) does NOT have Win98 downloads http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support...latform=Windows while the European support page DOES list Win98 downloads http://esupport.epson-europe.com/ProductHo...LGPV41&tc=6

When I was in Germany and Switzerland 6 months ago Media Markt, ProMarkt and Saturn still had plenty of Win98-compatible printers. The United States is rapidly becoming the boondocks of personal computing, the backcountry, the outback. In Europe, for example, stores have a rich choice of Win98 compatible SDHC card readers, at Fry's in California I couldn't find one, but plenty of SD readers which didn't indicate whether they were for modern cards>2GB. The U.S. PC Magazine has vanished into virtual nothingness, at the magazine stands in the U.S. one can find maybe still one or two lone PC-oriented publications, next to about 30 publications about cars, SUVs and motorcycles. In Germany in contrast there are maybe 7 really good PC publications, of which my personal favorite one is PC Praxis. all at a level never reached by a single US publication available at newsstands during the last 5 years.

One of the nicest things ever made in the U.S., the Mickey Mouse and Uncle Scrooge comics, cannot be gotten anymore in the U.S. (except for very hard to find reprints for a handful of adult collectors), and Disney Channel in contrast to 10 years ago doesn't show these Duck Tales cartoons anymore. But in Europe you can still find these Americana at every newsstand. Possibly Windows 98SE will become as legendary as Mickey Mouse, but hard to find in its country of origin.

Edited May 2, 2009 by Multibooter

[Fredledingue]

Interresting. The US losing the PC culture...

It's true that in Europe we have a large choice of computer ublications from "Hackers" to "PC Games". Many special editions too. Many stuff about Linux. It's not rare to find a complete, free Linux distro packed with a PC mag.

But major pC magazines are very boring. It's all about the last Windows version, photo and video.

The most revealing is the tips they write now and the tips they wrote 10 yaers ago: Almost the same.

Just as if there had made no improvement in the OS...

"How to make your PC faster", "Which memory stick do I need", "Defragment your HD", "How to make your own movies", "Manage your pictures" etc.

They repeat the same things again and again.

Also how many new apps (free or commercial) are issued everyday (or almost) to tweak, customize or maintain XP or Vista.

How many new picture, video or mp3 managers per day?

It's an endles flow of new apps and they all do the same things moreless.

So much time, money and energy spent on redoing the same things again and again. But Microsoft will never do once and for all a clear interface to do these stuffs. (Try to configurate IE in Vista, good luck! It takes you at least one hour unless you know exactely what you wanna do.)

M$ should fix the problems once and for all, instead of letting third parties fix it for them. An anti-virus shouldn't be needed on an OS, period.

It's not so difficult to make a fast and reliable system restore/backup, especialy when you can boot in Dos. Unlike the XP that takes ages to make system restore point but will almost always fail to rrestore your system when you need it.

[Multibooter]

The most revealing is the tips they write now and the tips they wrote 10 yaers ago: Almost the same. Just as if there had made no improvement in the OS...

The PC has become a mature product, an applicance like a refrigerator or a washing machine. Since it's getting hard to make a fast buck with PCs, people have lost their interest in PCs here. I have met several people during my search for old Win98 stuff at garage sales, 8-10 on Saturday mornings, who were MS certified professionals years ago, until they changed to become real estate agents. In my neighborhood CompUSA went bankrupt over a year ago, PCClub has closed, and the last little computer repairshop in my high-tech area is gone. The only big computer+electronics store left here is Fry's.

[winxpi]

When I was in Germany and Switzerland 6 months ago Media Markt, ProMarkt and Saturn still had plenty of Win98-compatible printers. The United States is rapidly becoming the boondocks of personal computing, the backcountry, the outback. In Europe, for example, stores have a rich choice of Win98 compatible SDHC card readers, at Fry's in California I couldn't find one, but plenty of SD readers which didn't indicate whether they were for modern cards>2GB. The U.S. PC Magazine has vanished into virtual nothingness, at the magazine stands in the U.S. one can find maybe still one or two lone PC-oriented publications, next to about 30 publications about cars, SUVs and motorcycles. In Germany in contrast there are maybe 7 really good PC publications, of which my personal favorite one is PC Praxis. all at a level never reached by a single US publication available at newsstands during the last 5 years.

One of the nicest things ever made in the U.S., the Mickey Mouse and Uncle Scrooge comics, cannot be gotten anymore in the U.S. (except for very hard to find reprints for a handful of adult collectors), and Disney Channel in contrast to 10 years ago doesn't show these Duck Tales cartoons anymore. But in Europe you can still find these Americana at every newsstand. Possibly Windows 98SE will become as legendary as Mickey Mouse, but hard to find in its country of origin.

Yeah that's true Mickey Mouse comics are still sold in the so called "trafik" in US colloquial for newsstand, where you buy cigarettes or newspapers, mobile phone cards etc.

I don't know why, but the Mickey Mouse comics are existing since cigarettes are bought in European germanic countries, quit strange somehow, but they are very popular, quite many in my familiy read them as childs/teenagers.

Hopefully Windows 98 will really become as popular as Mickey Mouse, then we've reached more than we wanted *g*.

Edited May 3, 2009 by winxpi

[Fredledingue]

multibooter

IMO, the time when an independant dealer would spend 2 hours fixing a bug on your machine is gone.

The horror is the OEM distribution. M$ made the huge conceptual mistake in attempting to make the PC a mature product like a a refrigerator or a washing machine. The fact is that it isn't.

Even if you don't install anything yourself, your PC changes overtime. Moreso if you do.

It's a as modelable as clay. It's like you buy a small car and 6 months later you have a pickup (fully loaded with crap of course). As soon as it hit the internet it start morphing.

After one year it's beyond recognition.

A PC is a life organism. An electronic one, but living as certainly as I'm here typing.

It's way too complex to have 5 buttons and here you go. That's what M$ tried to do, but they only created a monster even worse.

[cannie]

multibooter

A PC is a life organism. An electronic one, but living as certainly as I'm here typing.

An excellent definition. But all efforts are directed to make it a foolish terminal in the hands of soft and hardware providers. User's ignorance pays: no need of PC reviews at all, only ads.

[Drugwash]

Changing standards is what will eventually kill the 9x community. When HTML, PHP, ASP, Flash and all others will no longer be backwards compatible, none of the 9x users will be able to browse the web anymore.

You'll say there's KernelEx - it can only do so much and it's a one-man show (more or less), can go down at any time.

You'll say there's convertors - soon there won't be people to build/update them anymore, so they'll lie down and die.

They are changing standards too fast and too deep. There is unspoken pressure to take the 9x network down - I have never ever seen such a concerted action as this dissapearing of 9x drivers (for one) and 9x-compatible software; this almost looks like the works of a magic wand but I'm too darn old to believe in magic.

Final blow will be the introduction of IPv6 which will definitely kill all 9x web activity unless any of the well-known to us genii will take the Hitachi IPv6 driver for NT4 and bring it to 9x usability. And then all that's left for us is sit quietly at home, isolated and alone, playing old DOS arcade games on whatever 9x-compatible hardware may still be alive at the time.

Fade to black...

[Bleeder]

Final blow will be the introduction of IPv6 which will definitely kill all 9x web activity unless any of the well-known to us genii will take the Hitachi IPv6 driver for NT4 and bring it to 9x usability.

I thought Hitachi ToolNet6 work on Win98 and NT4 already?

[Drugwash]

Dunno, you may be right regarding 98 (even 95?). Never tried it myself since there's no IPv6 network in the surroundings that I know of.

Should work fine with NT4 since it was designed for it, though.

[cyberformer]

Drugwash said.....

"Final blow will be the introduction of IPv6 which will definitely kill all 9x web activity unless any of the well-known to us genii will take the Hitachi IPv6 driver for NT4 and bring it to 9x usability."

Spot on Drugwash! Spot on indeed!

I keep warning people of this danger, and no one seems to pay heed to my warnings!

I looked for the Hitachi IPv6 driver, and cannot find it.

Can anyone here post a link if they can; I want to see what it does in my 9x test box.

[Atmosphere XG]

They are changing standards too fast and too deep. There is unspoken pressure to take the 9x network down - I have never ever seen such a concerted action as this dissapearing of 9x drivers (for one) and 9x-compatible software; this almost looks like the works of a magic wand but I'm too darn old to believe in magic.

Windows 98 was the last operating system that allowed you to have full control over your computer. I had no other choice but to upgrade to Windows 2000 based on audio VST that would not work on Windows 98. However, it still gives you more freedom than Windows XP.

I tried Windows 7 for I while but had to put it down based on restricting me to do many things on my computer that had no affiliation to the Internet.

[Multibooter]

M$ made the huge conceptual mistake in attempting to make the PC a mature product like a a refrigerator or a washing machine. The fact is that it isn't.

When I used the term "mature product" I was thinking of an S curve in economic theory. Although a lot of little improvements have been made between Hitler's Volkswagen design and todays Volkswagen beetle, functionally they are quite similar: they take you from point A to point B. Maybe twice as fast today.

Similarly, you can do most things nearly equally well on a 10-year-old Win98 computer as on a state-of-the-art Vista machine. This small improvement in the functionality of a product type, over 10 years, I would call the hallmark of a mature product. My 8-bit HP125 CP/M computer of 1982, in contrast, was not a mature product yet, it can hardly do a thing which my Dell Inspiron 7500s of the year 2000 can do. Mature products have low profit margins; there is market saturation, like 3 TVs, 2 cars and 3 PCs per household. At the end of the industry/product/innovation life-cyle of a major invention, economic history tells of big bankruptcies and economic crises, as happened decades ago to US railroads, or to US airlines. Now it's the turn of cars and personal computers.

Win98SE will not disappear as quickly as CP/M, because Win98SE is functionally a mature product.

Edited May 4, 2009 by Multibooter

[dencorso]

[somewhat offtopic]

Although a lot of little improvements have been made between Hitler's Volkswagen design and todays Volkswagen beetle, functionally they are quite similar: they take you from point A to point B. Maybe twice as fast today.

No! Today's sorry contrafaction of the beetle cannot be even remotely thought of as a true Volkswagen beetle! It may be faster. But it's as false as a US$3 bill. The last true Volkswagen beetle was produced in Mexico, in 2003.

[/somewhat offtopic]

Edited May 4, 2009 by dencorso

[Multibooter]

Changing standards is what will eventually kill the 9x community. When HTML, PHP, ASP, Flash and all others will no longer be backwards compatible, none of the 9x users will be able to browse the web anymore.

I have been amazed at how adaptable my 9-year-old Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop has been with PC CardBus cards, especially USB 2.0 and Ethernet/WLAN cards.

Here a comment regarding the interface potential under Win98 of the dinosaur Ethernet: I got my HP2605 duplex color laser printer (USB+Ethernet) to work fine under Win98 when connected by Ethernet cable to the Ethernet CardBus card of the laptop, via IP based printing, something I have not seen in the HP printer docu. The HP2605 printer actually works fine under Win98 when it is simultaneously connected by cable to 2 running computers: with the USB cable to laptop1 and with the Ethernet cable to laptop 2.

Edited May 4, 2009 by Multibooter

[seaweed]

At the end of the industry/product/innovation life-cyle of a major invention, economic history tells of big bankruptcies and economic crises, as happened decades ago to US railroads, or to US airlines. Now it's the turn of cars and personal computers.

You may substract 1 from 2 using trigonometrical functions and algebra, or by a simple substraction. An OS is nothing but a complex algorythm, not good or bad, nor new or old, but convenient or not convenient for actual needs.

In the computer industry big money was made initially by fulfilling elemental user's needs in a direct way. Later on, more and more complex procedures are used to do the same things, requiring in many cases incompatible hardware and taking profit of the facilities given by the fact that most of the spare parts come from asian countries where there are no limits to speculative product shortages.

The warm "cooperation" of the asian partners, providers of more than 85% of the hardware that we all use every day, allowed that one month after the end of Windows 98 support, a totally correct decision of Microsoft, it were almost impossible to find several essential compatible spare parts in the local dealers to repair your Windows 98 computer.

If Microsoft creates a not compatible OS it is excellent news and it means a scientific advance because I think it allows more possibilities in many fields, as algebra or trigonometry do, even when it doesn't mean any advance for simple tasks. Simple tasks and home computers are not all in the computing field. But you may be sure that next day their spontaneous "friends" of the asian countries will stop providing spare parts for XP and even for Vista to home users.

I don't need Microsoft support to go on using Windows 98, but can't keep using it if I don't find spare parts. Only four months after the Microsoft decision I could not repair my laptop and had to buy a new one. This never happened to me when I had to repair any of the cars I owned, even when one of them was 7 years old.

Edited May 4, 2009 by seaweed