Choosing what versions of Windows to support is a tricky decision. Should you support Windows 95, 98, ME, NT3.5, NT4, 2000 and so forth? Where to draw the line?
But first, why not support all of them?
The first naive idea might be to support all of them, thus, maximizing your market share. Well, most software vendors don't support all of the Windows OS versions. It's not because they don't want to, everyone wants to increase their base of potential users, right?
But supporting older versions is expensive. The differences between OS versions are significant in some cases. 95 and 98 for instance don't support Unicode natively.
Further more, Microsoft itself do not support these older platforms anymore. Below, you can see the OS license availability roadmap:
Expired:
1. Windows 95 - expired: November 30, 2001
2. Windows NT Workstation 4.xx - expired: June 30, 2003
3. Windows 98 - expired: November 30, 2003
4. Windows 98 SE - expired: March 31, 2004
5. Windows Me - expired: June 30, 2004
6. Windows 2000 Professional - expired: March 31, 2005
Live:
1. Windows XP Professional - will expire: January 31, 2009
2. Windows XP Home Edition - will expire: January 31, 2009
This only includes the desktop OSes, not the Server versions.
It is pre-Vista too.
However, it seems to suggest that XP and Vista are the only viable choice for consumer products. Is that so?
According to a market research by OneStat.com, the list 10 most popular OSes* (including Windows OSes) is:
1. Windows XP - 86.80%
2. Windows 2000 - 6.09%
3. Windows 98 - 2.68%
4. Macintosh - 2.32%
5. Windows ME - 1.09%
6. Linux - 0.36%
7. Windows NT - 0.24%
8. Macintosh Power PC - 0.15%
(* This is a list of operating systems on the web and it was released in August, 2006)
It shows clearly that XP dominates the market, but it also shows that 2000 and 98/Me are still live out there. Now the question you have to ask yourself is: Are you willing to lose 10% of the Windows market represented by 2000/98/Me/NT?
Friday, May 04, 2007 8:51:23 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
