But Microsoft is stressing that the problem is not Year 2000 related. However, the bug could cause problems for Windows 98 computers running financial applications or other date-reliant software applications. In order to experience this, you have to be booting your machine in the exact fraction of a second when the machine is rolling the date over, and that fraction of a second varies from machine to machine. Although Microsoft estimates that this particular bug is only of concern to one in 6 million Windows 98 users, industry analysts argue that because Microsoft's products are on so many desktops, even very rare bugs are important to publicize. You're held to a higher standard.
People expect it to work.
Launched on June 25, Windows 98 has already come under fire because of problematic upgrade experiences on older machines, and rumors of an imminent update with bug fixes have been rampant. Microsoft recently confirmed that an upcoming multimedia update was originally planned as a service pack. Despite these issues, this is the first actual bug specific to Windows 98 code, Akers said.