Desktop platforms Toolkit

Story: End of the road for Win 98 support

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This is not that significant.

Don't let this panic you into going to Win XP unless you really want to and you know the implications (does XP have drivers for your old hardware? Is your machine fast enough and has it got enough RAM? How much will it cost?)

If, as you should be, you are running Win98 with a suitable Firewall, Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus and use e.g. Firefox instead of IE for browsing then you can carry on as normal. The risk only really increases when you can no longer get anti-virus signatures, anti-spyware updates and Firefox updates. If you're prepared to switch these products around (try different free AV products etc.) to use the last ones which support Win98 then you've probably got somewhere between 2-3 years to go before the risks start to rise. Even this is offset by the fact that in 2 years time or so virtually no viruses etc. will be targetting win98 and they will work on it only purely by chance.

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