1. In the business world, you have to use something that can interoperate with others' systems. Given time, you'll find that Word documents from other businesses won't open in Word from Office 97. That's just the beginning. If you're standardizing on Windows 98 because you have it already, and your network grows, you'll have some interesting luck trying to buy new copies of Windows 98 for the new machines.

2. With the advent of "product activation", in time the end of support for an old OS will come to mean the end of the legal "right" to use it.