A Worrying Trend

[georgethetee]

I'm sure we all check what OSs software will work with before buying. Last week, seduced by a rave revue in Computeractive, I went in Game and looked for GTR FIA - an amazing state of the art racing simulation. Imagine my disappointment to read under Min Spec: Windows Me/2000/XP. Under 'Recommended' it just said XP!

Knowing that Game usually swap if you got a good reason, I bought it anyway - and it works on my 98se absolutely great! Fantastic graphics, frame rates and total stability.

I can only assume they just couldn't bother checking it on a 98 PC. A great mistake, millions still use it.

[Jlo555]

I agree it is a big mistake. Most of the time the problem is that the game simply hasn't been tested under that OS. I find it very strange that the game even works on ME. Most new games say only 2000/XP or just XP. You may be in luck because if it works on winME, I'd say there's a 75% chance of it running perfectly fine on 98SE (and I emphasize the SE, because there's a lot of software that is too new for 98 Gold.) But 98SE "should" run just about anything you install on it, it is not too old, and millions of people DO still use it. You want to blame someone for this, blame Microsoft. They're doing everything in their power to move people to XP and to Vista now, and one of the ways they do this is by pressuring software companies to stop supporting old OS's. But if it works on ME, it should work on 98SE, so go ahead and buy the game.

[wizardofwindows]

amen brother hail 9x

[somewan]

I agree it is a big mistake.  Most of the time the problem is that the game simply hasn't been tested under that OS.  I find it very strange that the game even works on ME.  Most new games say only 2000/XP or just XP.  You may be in luck because if it works on winME, I'd say there's a 75% chance of it running perfectly fine on 98SE

Probably higher. The major difference between Win98SE and WinME is that they tried to sweep real mode DOS under the rug. Other than that, there are some DLL and system file upgrades.

You want to blame someone for this, blame Microsoft.  They're doing everything in their power to move people to XP and to Vista now, and one of the ways they do this is by pressuring software companies to stop supporting old OS's.

Yes, I'm sure we all remember the good old days when they wanted you to move from DOS to Win3.x and from 3.x to 95...

[Jlo555]

I hate it when companies attempt to force you to upgrade against your will just because they want to squeeze more money out of people. This is the price we pay for being interesting in technology... literally. I wish we could just pick a format for everything (like audio/video/software) and just keep it like that for a while. Seems like everytime I turn a corner, something new comes out that I will inevitably be forced to buy one way or another. But, I'm sticking with Win98SE for the time being when it comes to software. Eventually, I'll go back to 2000, then that will become obsolete and fade away and then... possibly Linux. This may sound harsh but I believe that all the OS's that came out of MS after win2000 are bloated pieces of crap.

This is especially frustrating when your a gamer. I hate being forced to upgrade my OS and my hardware just to play the latest and greatest Grand Theft Auto.

[georgethetee]

We're all in agreement here, I think. Win98se is a great OS, I love it as much for what it HASN'T got as for what it has - anyone with an XP system, try checking in your local/temp folder sometime, millions of useless files accumulating purposelessly.

I just checked some other purchases, and found - unnoticed till now - that Richard Burns Rally - a fantastic rally sim - is also allegedly for 2000/XP. Works ok for me ( I mean me, not ME!)

[Jlo555]

GTA: San Andreas is a relatively high-end game that is only "meant" for 2000/XP, yet with some tweaking/patches, it runs perfectly in 98SE.

And I have heard of some people modifying Doom 3 to run perfectly fine on 98SE.

I haven't tried Battlefield 2 really but I did see the OS requirements were simply "XP". My brother had a copy of the game so I put in the install cd and it said "This game has only been tested on Windows XP Service Pack 1." It is hard to distinguish which software is programmed to not run on anything lower than 2000/XP and what software simply hasn't been tested on old OS's. So, I'd say the best way to go is just to test out software that says it won't run on anything but newer OS's. (And, I say newer because XP is not in any way new, it's nearly 4 years old!! And 98SE, god forbid, is 5 1/2 years old!! And people have said 98SE is old and obselete!

[Andromeda43]

Quite often (I'll resist saying "Usually" here) the ability of a system to run some piece of software or another is not the OS but the hardware itself.

Some old CPU/mobo combinations are highly efficient and others are real Dogs!

There are some old 98 machines still running a pentium II CPU and using only 16 megs of ram. Try playing Doom on that pooch! It would struggle with "PacMan".

I've just installed XP-Pro+SP2 on an old 300mhz HP with a 20 gig ATA100 HD. It is however using 256 megs of RAM and runs pretty darn'd good.

So, in so many cases, it's actually the installed hardware and not the OS that governs whether some game, etc. will run well or not.

I think MS just takes it for granted that any PC still using 98 is an old, slow dog.

But, that's not always the case.

Good Luck,

Andromeda43