by David Berlind, da ZDNet.

Though Microsoft's Web site appears to indicated otherwise, the company has acknowledged that, going forward, critical Internet Explorer security updates will only be available for Internet Explorer (IE) running on Windows XP. From a security perspective, the move officially strands users running IE on Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows Millenium (the latter three for which a clarification of support statement on Microsoft's Web site says "Critical security updates will be provided on the Windows Update site through June 30, 2006."). Microsoft's Web site says mainstream support for Windows 2000 Professional is not scheduled to end until June 30, 2005.

To defend its decision, Microsoft could argue that IE and Windows are two separately supported software products and that the unfinished support lifecycles of certain versions of Windows doesn't necessarily include applications that run on them such as IE. The different versions of IE are listed as a separate products from the historical version of Windows on Microsoft's product lifecycle Web page. On the other hand, in defense of its decision to give IE away – a move that the Department of Justice argued was in violation of U.S. antitrust law because of the way it foreclosed on competitors (eg: Netscape) and helped to maintain Microsoft's monopoly – Microsoft vociferously argued that Windows and IE were intertwined in such a way that two could not be separated. To keep Windows systems as secure as possible, Microsoft said "We recommend that customers upgrade to XP and SP2 as quickly as possible." At minimum upgrading from an older version of Windows to Windows XP will cost users $99.

Meanwhile, there are ways to beat the $99 charge. Mozilla.org, for example, is just now in the midst of releasing the first version of its Firefox browser as a free download. Though Mozilla.org has reported its fair share of vulnerabilities for Netscape (and will no doubt be reporting some for Firefox), alternative browser adoption is widely acknowledged as one way to improve system security because of how authors of browser exploits have almost exclusively targeted IE. That said, according to a page on Mozilla.org's Web site, while Firefox supports Window 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and even Windows NT 4.0, Windows XP is "recommended" as the version of Windows that Windows users should run. Firefox also runs on Linux and Mac.