As far as I can tell, there is no plan to cease support for Win9X. Whenever it happens it will be out of necessity. I have avast! Pro on a 98SE PC and I’m expecting to be still using it in 2010 when the license expires (of course I may not still have 98SE by then) so I think you’d be safe with a 1 year license.
Note:Newer features of 4.8 like self-protection & anti-rootkit already do not function with 98SE/ME.
Avast is one of the very few if not the only antivirus solution left that supports Windows 9x/ME. I don’t think we are looking at these operating systems being supported by “up to date” software, in any way, for very much longer.
nightshade
ardvark’s statement is counter to at least one recent event. Alwil devs modified avast! 4.8 to maintain Windows 95 compatibilty. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=34998.0 It doesn’t look to me like they are ldropping 9X support soon.
I believe avast will continue support for Windows 9x/ME at least up until version 5, perhaps even beyond. We’ll wait and see. However, how many other AV’s, free or paid, can you think of that still support these operating systems? I know Clamwin and NOD32 still supports 9x/ME but that’s about it. AVG and AntiVir no longer do.
Are there any others that still do that I don’t know about?
As far we know, support to ‘old’ features will continue.
New features (or the ones restricted to the operational system, like boot time scanning for instance) won’t be supported.
ardvark
I wasn’t sure if you had meant support by software producers in general or avast! in particular, I ended up going for the latter. BTW, you can add Dr Web to the list. All I can say is that I get the “vibe” that 95–>ME support will continue with avast! 5, at least in a minimal way.
nightshade
I wasn’t trying to be cryptic :-[. The “event” was the fix for the Win95 compatibility fix in 4.8.1195 as discussed in the “pasted” thread and announced in the revision history, 4.8.1195, May 12 2008, last item. Hope that’s clearer.