Windows98 finally reached retail stores on June 25th. While the release date was in jeopardy due to the U.S. Department of Justice's suit against the company, U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Jackson decided on May 22 that the company could release its product even though the case will come to a speedy trial beginning September 8th as requested by DOJ.
Despite the early hearing of the case, it may be years until a decision is handed down. During that time, tens-of- millions of copies of Windows98 will have been sold. Current projections are 12.8 million by the end of the first year of shipping, and 66 million by the end of the third year of shipping.
Windows98 is not a new operating system, but an improved version of Windows95. The greatest improvements are better stability and support for a wider range of hardware. Internet Explorer 4.0 installs by default, but it is possible to remove the browser icon. [The code remains on the system] . Many of the new features-primarily performance enhancements-were actually released as "fixes" to Windows95 over the last three years.
Windows98 requires a minimum hardware platform of a 486/66 with 16 MB of memory, but performance will not be as good as with Windows95. For improved performance, a Pentium-level machine with 32 MB is recommended.
The adoption of Windows98 is likely to occur faster in the consumer market than the corporate and educational market as most consumers take the operating system loaded on the PC by the manufacturer. Almost all PC manufacturers will be using Windows98 beginning this September-the traditional beginning of the Christmas selling season. A few plan to include Windows95 with a free upgrade kit for Windows98.
Information technology specialists in corporations and educational institutions are generally cool toward Windows98, believing that it is not worth the time and cost to install Windows98 when the improvements over Windows95 are modest and all Windows software will run on either 95 or 98. They are also reacting to Microsoft' s increasing emphasis on Windows NT as the desktop operating system designed for business and education. Windows NT, version 5 is scheduled to be released in 1999.
While very large corporations often dictate that all machines have the same operating system (installing unauthorized software is tantamount to quitting, says the staff handbook of one Fortune 500 company) , that is generally not the case in smaller businesses and educational institutions. The Contributing Editor's view is that Windows98 will infiltrate the majority of organizations as individuals and departments make purchases of PCs configured with Windows98, and as individuals upgrade their own machines. These "stealth users," as they are known in the industry, will do so not only because of Windows98's ubiquitous availability but also because they have experienced crashes and other stability problems with Windows95.
Even before they worry about Windows98 and Windows NT for the desktop, libraries should systematically retire older machines with various versions of MS-DOS. In mid-1999-when both Windows98 and Windows NT 5.0 can be evaluated-they should seek to decide on the operating system of choice.
