>
>That was my first approach. But I think it is unnecessary, one only needs to check GetVersion() for 95, 98, and ME. This is because the lack of support is confined to 95, 98 and ME, and since they are officially abandoned by Microsoft, it will never get fixed.

True but millions of people are still using these at home, it will take years before XP and follow-on displace these, only gamers upgrade all the time. I have 2 PCs at home both running Win98 and don't expect a new machine until around 2005 sometime.

> >That was my first approach. But I think it is unnecessary, one only needs
to
> >check GetVersion() for 95, 98, and ME. This is because the lack of
support
> >is confined to 95, 98 and ME, and since they are officially abandoned by Microsoft, it will never get fixed.
>
> True but millions of people are still using these at home, it will take
years
> before XP and follow-on displace these, only gamers upgrade all the time.
I have
> 2 PCs at home both running Win98 and don't expect a new machine until
around
> 2005 sometime.

Exactly!

It's all very well for developers, who develop and test on modern OSs, to proclaim that there is no problem. The reality is that *many* users, and quite a lot of developers (such as yourself) still use Win9x, and to ignore it will be folly for D.

>> 2 PCs at home both running Win98 and don't expect a new machine until around 2005 sometime.
>
>Exactly!
>
>It's all very well for developers, who develop and test on modern OSs, to proclaim that there is no problem. The reality is that *many* users, and quite a lot of developers (such as yourself) still use Win9x, and to ignore it will be folly for D.

Most of my relatives and neighbors have the newest version of Windows. And that's because it just is there when you buy a new computer. There's no end of grievances with the new Nice Features. New updates come almost every day by the wire, your games stop mysteriously working, you get the feeling Big Bill is spying on you, you don't dare to change any hardware on any machine with important files (because at home nobody has any backups). And the worst thing is that the new Windowses pretend to be alive, like Real OSs. That is, they do things on their own, and the user just hears the hard disk rattling, with no idea of what's going on. Is it a hacker on the machine, has it become a junk mail server, or is it just Windows pondering over its own existence.

I have W2k on one, and W95 and W98 on other machines. And I sure as hell need some serious reasons for not removing any new Windows that comes with new hardware. Today I only use Windows when I have to use a Windows-only program (like the Ecco PIM, accounting, and Word and Excel, which still feel smoother and have daily used features that I can't find in Open Office). The Office-97 versions are good enough for me.