On Thursday, 18 January 2018 05:43:47 UTC, wrote:
On Wednesday, 17 January 2018 23:45:13 UTC, rickman wrote:
wrote on 1/17/2018 4:39 PM:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 13:59:41 -0800, Mary-Jane Rottencrotch
wrote:
On 2018-01-13 13:29, wrote:

Yea, I know computer mice are cheap, but I need a PS/2 connector and
want a ball mouse. I dont like the infared mice, and can not use a USB
mouse on my Windows 98 computer.

Does it not have USB ports? Disregarding the utter ridiculousness of
still using Windows 98 in 2018, it supports USB just fine (since Windows
95 OSR 2.1, around 1997 - 21 years ago nearly).


When the government makes it mandatory to upgrade to the latest version
of Windows, I'll be the first person to throw my computer in the
garbage. I use both Win98 and XP. I wont touch anything newer.

I recently had the misfortune of someone handing me a computer with
Windows 8. They asked me to do someting with it. As soon as I saw that
butt ugly Metro screen, I closed the lid and told them to toss it in the
nearest garbage can.

Just for the record, Win 95 and 98 did not have good USB support. That
was just the one drawback of Win 9.x. Otherwise it was far superior to
anything made by MS since. Win98SE works better for me than any other OS
I have ever used. But XP is tolerable too, just lacks in some ways.

One other thing, I still use DOS, a USB mouse or keyboard wont work on
Dos.

I believe they made minor tweaks to 98 to create Windows ME and then
discontinued that OS line. The reason was it was designed from the ground
up to be insecure and unstable. It was impossible to provide the sort of
protection from misbehaving applications and malware that the "real" OS line
descended from NT has. I recall my copy of Windows 98 had gotten so full of
poorly written drivers that it would crash about once an hour. I got my
hands on a copy of of Win2k and my life was forever changed. If you are
going to obsess with a version of Windows, THAT is the one.

Windows 98 is a real piece of crap and anyone who is obsessed with running
it has so much to learn. But then we pretty much know that about you
anyway. So no surprises there. BTW, this was typed on a Windows 8 machine
that hasn't been rebooted in well over a month. Hmmm... 1 hour, 1 month...
I wonder which is better?

98 was dreadfully unstable and insecure by today's standards. But back then there wasn't anything better, it was as good as it got. Before anyone objects of course there were NT and stable non-windows OSes, but none of them had the range of apps needed to be very useful as a desktop machine.

Once you learnt 98's many foibles and got it running sufficiently, it's then near zero effort to keep running it. Hence many of us ran it when there were in some ways better OSes available. But I sure do not regret going linux, and watch people's endless win up/down/sideways-grade nightmares with bemusement. Why people are so keen to volunteer for their own misery I don't know.


NT

Somewhere out there there's a set of windows 2 apps made to run on modern windows. They're still usable.


NT