Windows 98 Still Hanging In There 10 Year Laters
I was in the UK over the Christmas period visiting family and had my annual reminder of what technology is like in the real world. Just before Christmas there had been a lot of buzz in the web community about IE8 passing the ACID2 test and the forthcoming release of Firefox 3. It’s easy to get caught up in the latest advancements and forget about the reality of what’s actually happening on the ground.
On an intellectual level I know that I have to take into consideration dial up users and people that have outdated browsers when I design my clients’ web sites, but it feels like I never actually come across these people and therefore they don’t seem that real to me. I have news folks. They are real. They’re everywhere…
Journey To The Beginning Of The Web
My first port of call on my journey into the past was Edinburgh. We were meant to rendezvous with some friends who had also come over from Brussels. They were making their way round the UK couch surfing, using a web site called www.couchsurfing.com to arrange a place to stay each night. They wanted to do it this way so they could stay in peoples homes, see what life is like in the UK and improve their English. So I knew they’d be online nearly every day checking their sleeping and travel arrangements. I thought I’d better check to see if they’d been trying to email me.
So I asked my girlfriend’s brother if I could check my email. I knew he had an old mac and that’s fine, but when I switched it on, there it was. OS9.something or other and Netscape Communicator 4.2 on dial up. Wow. Set ups like this occasionally appear in the stats of sites I build but it’s very rare and you can let that completely determine the design of the site. It had to be an isolated case. It wasn’t. Over the next few days I came across more out of date computer set ups that modern.
Windows 98 Lives On
I’ve solved the mystery of why Windows 98 still keeps on showing up in site stats. It’s because people really do still use it! Even more scary, lots of people still use it! I wanted to check train times for one of our journeys and I’d seen an easyInternetcafé in the centre of town a couple of days before. So I went back there, purchased a ticket from the high tech vending machine, entered the code on a free PC and checked the train times and a couple of other sites.
When I was done I went to clear out the browser cache and history to be on the safe side, but it wouldn’t let me. I checked the browser version, IE6. Oh well I thought, if I can’t get to it then it shows they have some security procedures in place. Sure enough, when I logged off, I was told that the computer would now restart and wipe all of my data. That was reassuring, but the biggest surprise was when the Windows 98 logo showed up. 10 years on and it’s still in use in a commercial organisation whose business is the internet! In fairness, I don’t know if all easyInternetcafé cafes use Windows 98 as their operating system and I’m not implying that it’s unsafe to use their PCs, but I checked on their website today and they had an announcement on their site that they would be rolling out their 4th generation system to all 74 of their cafes in 2006. At that time they had 5200 PCs and were serving 12 million customers every year. The company operates on a franchise basis and those figure will no doubt have grown in the past 2 years so that’s a lot of casual Windows 98 users.
On the way out of the cafe I did notice a sign on the wall listing some popular website such as FaceBook couldn’t be accessed via their computers. Time for an upgrade I think. I look forward to their Linux distro EasyPC.
The fact of the matter though is that I managed to easily get online and check the train times so I’m not complaining.
Deeper Into The Land Of Techno Reality
Three more visits and three more reality checks for the techno savvy.
First, my mother and father neither of whom have never had an email address and probably never will have one. So for their sake web designers, don’t forget to put put a phone number and address of your business web sites and print materials.
Second my sister who has wi-fi but didn’t know the password to access it so let’s hope nothing happens to her laptop!
And finally, my girlfriend’s folks who have a modern computer, update their anti-virus regularly and use the internet for planning holidays, booking trains and email but still use dial up and on a 8am to 6pm only plan.
This Is The Reality
None of the above is a criticism of the people or organisations. They are using as much technology as they want, to do what they need to get done and that’s fine. The lesson is for us web designers who work in a high tech world and assume that others do.
