>>I simply don't believe Microsoft should be so desperate as to no longer supply proper versions of their old operating systems along with all patches that were applicable to them.
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>Reality is (agree with the purpose or not) that Microsoft does shut off support for obsolete systems (as most other vendors do). Whether it is just an economic justification (let's get users to upgrade every x years) or serious practical problems with dragging something along (DOS based windows has NO security and never was meant to), there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the obsolete systems. Putting yourself at risk supporting them is in my opinion very dangerous.

How many of these old applications running on DOS "need" security if they're running on an (internal) LAN with no internet access?

I repeat: it's no problem for us who live on the bleeding edge and ahhpily make more bucks by upgrading our user base. But MS has lots of customers who set up their systems in Win95 days and are still there. MS does not have to "support" the OS any longer, but it damn well has to make it easy for people to buy a fully up-to-date version of any operating system they've ever sold.

We're not talking about expensive physical tangible product here like a car. We're talking about a piece of software. A product that can EASILY be held in stock and EASILY replenished when it's supply runs low.