On 31 January 2016 at 17:19, Noel Chiappa <j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: > BTW, are you indicating that Win 98SE _in general_ should only be used for > retro-computing, or only Win 98SE _in the particular configration you > described_ should only be used that way?
AFAICS: At all. Ever. It's a nearly 20y old piece of code which was notoriously unstable and insecure when it was new. Look, I built, installed, ran, maintained & supported MS-DOS-based PCs for over 20y. I am not biased against DOS. But it's one of the feeblest OSes ever to sell well. DOS-based Windows was a bodge, a kludge, a temporary fix because OS/2 bombed and NT took a while to get ready. But NT is a better OS in every important or material way. I don't run MS OSes any more. I've moved on. Life's too short. I'm a domain expert in them: this is why I no longer use them. I'm typing under Mac OS X (on a 30y old keyboard) and my laptops run Linux. All require vastly less maintenance and are more stable and reliable -- as well as much cheaper -- than MS solutions. But anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge should know better than to run an old, unmaintained, out-of-support MS OS on any live Internet-facing machine. Even if it exchanges media with Internet-facing machines, *no*. Don't do it. Move on. Retro computing is a great hobby, even a way of life, but whereas a decades-old copy of anything from Linux to Multics is as safe today as it ever was, OSes of the Internet era *cannot* be used safely once they're well out of date. Old viruses are still out there, waiting to pounce. It's enough work fixing up old machines without fighting old malware too. Don't do it. Nothing older than Win7 on any Windows PC that accesses the Internet. This includes email. Yes, Jerome Fine, I'm talking to you, among others. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)
