“Also going unnoticed is that printer manufacturers have pulled Windows 98 drivers from their support sites.”
I have noticed that as well. I volunteer at a thrift store from time to time refurbishing stuff for internal use as well as for sell, and the ability to reuse older printers on older hardware is quite hampered by this.
There’s always driverguide.com, but they are going to pay for play. Not that I blame them.
So rehab the older computers with a flavor of Linux.
There’s flavors out there that work fine with older hardware. MEPIS comes to mind, but hey, they’re all free. Find one that works for you and stick with it.
BTW, on the Mac I prefer Camino for web browsing. Rock solid, basic browser (limited extensibility), stays out of your way, renders d@#n near everything.