FINAL WARNING!

[xj900uk]

In the UK we've only just done away with the hand-crank on the side of the PC to start it up in the mornings. My old PC upstairs runs on Windows 3.1 which was popular back in the nineties, admittedly not very well and it stopped updating yonks ago, but it still starts!

[Algenon5]

My first PC ran on Win 95 which I upgraded to Win 98 2nd edition (and I thought I was a genius because I managed to do it on my own). Its 100 GB hard drive is now used as 2nd-backup storage for my digitized music.

Al

[Nightposter]

First of all, in answer to the question" how can Microsoft...."
simple, they are a SOFTWARE company, in the business of selling software. If they supported XP forever, no one would buy newer stuff, and they'd go out of business. (wishful thinking)
second, I still run a laptop - on line - using windows 98 and another using XP and will continue to do so
Just because the evil empire has stopped updating, does not mean your computer is going to go up in smoke tomorrow.
Use your computer responsibly, keep virus and malware software up to date, don't click on "everything".
you should be ok, my 98 machine is still running fine.
Before you ask, the 98 machine is full of software I need to program two way radios, will not run on
a) newer computers
b) XP, vista etc...

I will not use the Microsoft answer..just buy a new computer.
I still own and use a Mac running OS 9 because it runs all my Photoshop graphics software just fine.