Do we need to support Win 95 any more?

[Indiepath]

How many of your customers / players have Win95?

We noticed that Win 95 was used by only 0.06% of those who visited our site this year. How many of your customers or visitors are using windows 95?

(I'm asking this because our current highscore .dll is working nicely on 98 but has not been made to work with 95)


WIN............................................... .......89 %
-Windows XP..................................74.6 %
-Windows NT..................................0.3 %
-Windows Me..................................1.1 %
-Windows Codename Longhorn...................0 %
-Windows CE..................................0 %
-Windows 98..................................3.6 %
-Windows 95..................................0 %
-Windows 2003................................0.1 %
-Windows 2000................................9.1 %

MAC............................................... .......1.5 %
-Mac OS X....................................1.2 %
-Mac OS 1206 0.2 %

Others............................................ .......9.4 %
-Unknown.....................................8.6 %
-Linux.......................................0.7 %
-Sun Solaris.................................0 %
-FreeBSD.....................................0 %
-AmigaOS.....................................0 %
-Symbian OS..................................0 %
-WebTV.......................................0 %
-OS/2........................................0 %
-RISC OS.....................................0 %
-NetBSD......................................0 %
-Unknown Unix system.........................0 %

[Jack Norton]

WIN 194376 76.6 %
Windows XP 161998 63.8 %
Windows NT 353 0.1 %
Windows Me 4284 1.6 %
Windows Codename Longhorn 23 0 %
Windows CE 205 0 %
Windows 98 10258 4 %
Windows 95 77 0 %
Windows 2003 958 0.3 %
Windows 2000 16220 6.3 %
Those are mine (this month so far, raw hits) so as you can see even my percentage is very close to 0% ... I think nobody uses WIN95 anymore.

[James C. Smith]

I never trusted those operating system stats generated by server web logs. Did older version of Netscape (the Brosewer someone with Wind95 would be using) report the OS? What if they are using an old version of AOL? Does the older AOL browser report the OS version in the agent string? Does your stats tool parse those older agent strings properly? Maybe your stats tool dropped support for Win95. ;-)

Regardless of what the web browser stats say, I would drop Win95 support if it was any trouble to maintain. So far I haven’t run into a function I need to use that isn't available in Win95. But if I did, I wouldn't hesitate to use it. Win95 is just too old to worry about anymore.

[Abscissa]

Microsoft themselves don't even support it anymore. At this point, I think anyone using Win95 probably already has bigger problems than getting your game to work. Though, I would still support it if it were trivial to do so.

[Ska Software]

No.

(simple answer)

[JoKa]

I use my old Pentium 2 with Win95 for low-end-tests and I'm always glad if my games even run on this old machine :)

However, I wouldn't spend much time on optimizing for Win95, guess it's nearly dead now.

[Ricardo C]

My development environment doesn't support Win95, so it's a moot point for me at the moment. In the future, I would support it only if it didn't require more than a day to take care of any W95-related issues. I'd rather work on supporting the Mac and Linux than worrying about Rip Van Winkle and his '95 box.

[svero]

Im in the middle of a beta and nobody reported using 95 either. Of course beta testers may tend to be a little more tech than your average player. But more than 80% of people were on winxp with a smattering of 98 users and the rest on NT or 2000

- S

[Bad Sector]

Why people can't let deprecated and shitty operating systems die?

(this includes win98)

[Ricardo C]

Because the upgrades keep getting more and more expensive? :D I paid $100 for Win98 and $300 for XP Pro. And while XP is certainly the best version of Windows, if I wasn't into game development, I would still be chugging along on 98.

[Bad Sector]

Couldn't you live with WinXP Home instead? There aren't many differences between Pro and Home (the biggest i can think is that Home does not include that CD burning functionality).

[Abscissa]

Because the upgrades keep getting more and more expensive?
Additionaly, the system requirements keep going up. My laptop is still running 98 simply because it just can't handle 2k/XP.

[Abscissa]

Couldn't you live with WinXP Home instead? There aren't many differences between Pro and Home (the biggest i can think is that Home does not include that CD burning functionality).
It also doesn't do IIS (For those that have a use for it).

[Indiepath]

Thanks for the answers. We are preparing .dll file for network purposes and at the moment it works fine on other windows OSs than in win 95.

We'll propably drop win95 if the development does not go smoothly.

[Ska Software]

What about 3.1?

...or, as I like to call it, the ultimate QBASIC IDE?

[Greg Squire]

Why people can't let deprecated and shitty operating systems die?

(this includes win98)

They are simply a big hastle in both time and dollars. The cost of the new OS and possibly new hardware (as previously mentioned), and lots of time to install the new OS (possibly breaking other apps installed and then all the time to fix/reinstall them). To many, this is as fun as a root canal.

Also their old machine may still work and it meets their needs still. So the old addage, "if it ain't broke don't fix it", holds very true for them.