sparx 0 Report post Posted January 5, 2006 Microsoft's "Product Life Cycle" sets a series of end dates for each product. What happens is that support is gradually withdrawn, stepwise, until the product reaches "end of life," when no support for the product in question is available to the end user. Windows 98 is scheduled to go lights-out on 30 June 2006. XP Home is scheduled to become unsupported on the last day of this new year 31 DEC 2006. XP Pro, though will continue to be supported (albeit not as well as the newer Vista will be) in the form of security updates until 2011. Don't expect many new features and Service Packs any time soon after SP3 (expected mid-2006). MS isn't likely to keep extending the SP support so far like it did with NT4 SP7 and SP4 for Win2000. Microsoft has played with the end dates in the past: Win 98's demise was announced several times before public pressure from existing customers forced MS to keep postponing the inevitable date several times. Judging from past behaviour and patterns, XP Home's support should be extended another year or so while Win 98 will definitely go bye-bye on 30 June of this year. This means that there'll be no new patches, updates, or fixes after the above date. By tradition, the support pages, online documentation and knowledge base will shut down a year later in 2007 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dhanesh1405241511 0 Report post Posted January 5, 2006 Windows 98 is scheduled to go lights-out on 30 June 2006. XP Home is scheduled to become unsupported on the last day of this new year 31 DEC 2006. XP Pro, though will continue to be supported (albeit not as well as the newer Vista will be) in the form of security updates until 2011. 1064334843[/snapback] Are you shure these dates are legimate ? Because if i am not wrong in june 2005 i had remembered going through a site saying M$ would stop support for Win98 on Dec 2005 .. Rather if your dates are correct then i still dont get y they should keep a change of dates between Win XP Home & Pro at longer differences. If Win 98 could be kept till 2006 then looking at XP Home .. support should be kept till 2010 approx. Either ways windows isnt doing a great job in OS. In 5 years they could come out with xp (vista yet to come) , and OS like Apple brought out OS 9, OS X, OS 10.4 etc .. not to leave Linux behind .. Linux has version updates of OS like every 6 mths regardless of the distro .. The day wont be late when you see people using MAC OS and Linux OS at home rather than Windows .. Regards Dhanesh. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pomjim 0 Report post Posted January 5, 2006 I think you will find that those dates are correct. By the way "sparks", I too read the Langa list!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sparx 0 Report post Posted January 6, 2006 I think you will find that those dates are correct. By the way "sparks", I too read the Langa list!! 1064334910[/snapback] As do I. But these dates were public domain and not proprietary info which need be attributed to th author. That being said, I certainly admit that I wrote this topic immediately after reading about it in the "Langa List" newsletter sent out by noted tech guru Fred Langa. Pomjim: This acknowledgement was especially for you. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sparx 0 Report post Posted January 13, 2006 UPDATE: MS has now increased the support period to two years after the next version of Windows (Vista) is released. Details here Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
