Windows 98 was far better than what apple had to offer at the time. As you move forward you find that microsoft will severly limit what you have a right to do. They will charge you more and more- maybe even getting into leasing windows to you. And they will spy on you more and more. Windows 98 was not so bad.
I was working in a college lab win Win98 was released.
Win98's initial release was a lemon full of problems. The second release of Win98 was a lot better.
Win98 was not far better than what Apple had to offer at the time. That kind of qualitative assertion is purely one of perspective. Mac OS 8, 8.5 were actually definitive improvements over 7.x. Insofar Win98's initial release, it was highly anticipated and failed to meet expectations. It was buggy as hell.
98 was a pretty good operating system for it's time. Also, at that time, there weren't nearly as many viruses, and many computers weren't hooked up to the net. 98 was fairly stable until you started downloading stuff from the internet and installing it. I switched to Apple with OSX and the half basketball iMac. My daughter still uses that system, and it still works fine.
I think Microsoft is entering a very dangerous phase, and that they could be facing some rough sledding. Gates is a business genius. His leaving the company will hurt badly. Ballmer took over as CEO in 1998, when Win98 work was completed. Since then, the company, to me, seems to have lost focus. XP, as a concept, was already pretty well fleshed out with NT. Vista is the first OS that has been his from start to finish, and it seems to be having problems getting out the door.
Also, Microsoft never won out because of technical superiority, but through better business acumen. Ballmer is obviously smart, but I don't think he's anywhere near Gates in terms of figuring out the right move at the right time.
Windows 98 was only better in one way, preemptive multitasking.