THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

If you don't run IE 6 you don't need it either so sometimes patching to the latest and greatest is what causes the problem. IE 5 and 5.5 don't need this patch and of course neither does Firefox ;)

Even if you are running Firefox if you are still running IE 6 under the hood you still need it.

If you are running IE 5 or 5.5 the underlying OS is getting toothy and out of date.

Darned if you do, darned if you don't.

Although IE 5 and even 5.5 may be a bit old and tends to be installed on Win9x machines I have had next to no touble with it when combined with virus protection, Spyware Blaster from JavaCool, Googles toolbar with pop up blocker. IE 5.5 is smaller and faster on old PC's than 6 and Firefox has even a smaller footprint.

Until we can get every customer to run XP Pro, SBS w/ ISA, current virus protection, etc then we are all going ot be supporting Win9x/NT server setups. It's hard to make a customer throw away what works. Heck I just installed Outlook 98 on two Win95 PC's yesterday which is all those systems can support (and that's pushing it) just so we could move the server from MS Post Office to Exchange. With the cost of licensing being so high smaller businesses just can't always stay up with today's tech and must get all they can get out of older systems.

They can't afford a $300 or $400 DELL OEM but they can afford to reboot their WinXX on a regular basis?

Sorry they are not looking at the big picture here.

95 has no more patches. It's insecure. Firefox has security issues as well [couple of stuff floating around the full disclosure listserve]

Your not going to buy a $300 Dell to replace a Win9x for an office. Cheapest thing your going to find at Dell with WinXP Pro and Office SB is going to be very close or over $1000 for anything worth a @%^&. I took their basic POS and added Office SB and WinXP Pro and the price was $860 and that's for a crappy 533FSB P4 and 256MB ram, try opening a business spreadsheet, email and virus protecton on that and your old Win9x would be faster.

The typical office shuts down their PC's daily so the old "rebooting" Win9x is mote. Their PC's have either Office 97 or 2K and Office XP and 03 add very little to justify spending $300.

I'm not saying users shouldn't upgrade, what I'm saying is MS has given users very little reason to upgrade. The typical office gets no benefit from Office 03 and SBS that they can see. Certainly not enough to justify spending $25k for a small office rollout. MS is aware of this and for that matter so is Intel. They both have figured out that the average customer is not going to upgrade every 18 months just because you release a new "something", there has to be a gain for the end user that they can see, touch and enjoy.

When I can go to sites which are still running Win9x and even DOS! to perform the functions they need to do their job showing them they can share calendars isn't going to sell them on an upgrade.

You are missing on the kewl features in Excel. The fact that I have a "mapped drive location footer in Excel". The fact that Word/Excel have tighter integration. The fact that I can remotely touch/patch machines. The fact that I have an event viewer that I can see what's up. The fact that those XP machines are also faster and thus the person can do twice as much. The fact that dual monitors [which XP natively supports] means that I can do paperless office stuff.

Sorry... someone is not looking at productivity gains and long term outlook and only looking in the near term.

Notice you keep saying "I" and 90% of what you mention is all admin task or power user features that the typical Word user could care less about.

I am not missing out on anything as I have SBS and Office 03 but all those Admin task which make it easier to manage the system is not something the average business owner can see, touch or put a $ amount on.

We care about it in my firm. The average owner isn't realizing the true cost of Windows 98. Isn't that up to you to help guide the owner and realize the true cost of the system?

You can guide but you can't force, just like the old horse saying. So back to my point that as long as the business cannot see it and touch it in terms of $$$ saved they are not going to buy it. ROI's on how much Xp saves over 98 in end user support doesn't cut it.

This is one place that MS has actually done a great deal and it's not being used nearly enough and that is with Trialware. You can get just about anything from MS now as a 120-180 trial and more partners should be using that for making the sell. If it's between me setting up a test enviroment for demo purposes for free and landing a 25-50k job I think you give away those demo cost.

Have I said that I'm stubborn btw? :-)

And tell me the name of a good tech who isn't!