Well the day has finally arrived. Next Tuesday (7/11/06), Microsfot will officially discontinue support for Windows 98 and Windows ME. no more security updates, no more operating system patches. Good riddance, you may say! These operating systems were never very stable, and were not well suited for the thorny security environment that is the modern Internet.
The only probably is that there are tens of thousands of schools, non-profit companies, and small businesses across the country and the world that still have a substantial number of working computers that are running Windows 98 and Windows ME. I hate to admit it, but I have one of each myself! (Strictly for non-critical applications you understand - think gaming and mp3 playback.)
I've visited a number of these smaller organizations in the course of my research and I've found that they are struggling with enough IT problems already and are under enough budgetary pressure that there is no way they ccan upgrade all of their older systems to Windows XP. A lot of those old systems wouldn't run XP without a hardware upgrade or two anyway, and it makes no economic sense whatsoever to try to revitalize a 5-10 year old PC.
I smell a niche market here, for someone who wants to package together a few key security apps that will still run happily on 98 and ME and that will help all of these smaller, less well resourced organizations squeeze just a little more life out of their PCs. Top of the list is Grisoft's AVG anti-virus package (free edition), followed closely by the popular Ad-Aware SE Personal (also free). With these and a couple of other add on programs, it may be possible to dodge the (in)security bullet with these older systems even if Microsoft had given them their final salute.