I get an “This program requires Windows version 4.9.3000 or later” error message while trying to install the latest beta … 
Yes, win9x support has been dropped as from 1.8.
This was announced little over two months ago on the front page
This has also been a point of discussion here:
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=9834
Sorry for any inconvenience, but we announced it in advance far ahead on front page and the boards to give people with older windows versions the time to upgrade.
I just don’t have 400 (four hundred!!) Euros to spend on XP SP2 …
http://www.mpl.be/products.aspx?id=67
Maybe I’ll contact my Russian friends again for uhm … never mind.
if you want to get something equvalent to win98 you should not got after winxp professional but after winxp home which costs about 80 EUR (DSP Version) over here in germany. According to your list, you can also save a lot of money by buing the DSP Versions. 400 bucks is the most expensive edition over there.
Another option might be to get a Win 2k on eBay.
I’ve bought my XP Home at 100 EUR about 2 years ago.
Believe me, if you used Win98, then XP Home has everything you needed on Win98, plus lots more, and there is no real reason to get XP Professional for an home user. Everything which Pro version has as a “bonus” can be easily found as freeware applications on the web
Sorry for answering this late, was a bit miffed …
Isn’t it so that you can install XP Home Edition only 5 times?
A bit stupid not to buy XP Home/Pro Oem when I bought my system 2 years ago …
I do have XP Pro SP1 now though but just yesterday, someone/something was probing my ports.
Got a decent firewall, so nothing bad happened.
1.8 Beta looks a bit chunkier, has it put on weight? 
Wait, wait, wait. Just out of curiosity…
What’s in Windows ME and not in Windows 98SE that makes the difference?
You mean wait for XP’s price to drop with Vista’s imminent entree?
Or wait for me to get older (=slower to learn…)?
I don’t agree on the second point. Heh.
Well, there was a limit to activate your windows license for an amount of times, but there are plenty of tools on the p2p and warez site that allow you to circumvent the activation.
It is not something that i would recommend using for the first time, but it would not hurt to download them and store the one that works on your copy, on a CD so that if you stumble against this limitation, you can use it.
However even if this limit has been reached, you usually still should call Microsoft and supply all the codes coming with the CD and they should help you out by resetting the activation counter on the servers.
It is not that they will point a finger at you that it will be time to buy another license.
But there may be a risk they won’t reset the activation anymore once full support on XP has been dropped in general and this is where the warez tools will come in handy.
albeit, i’m slowly looking forward to Vista and see how delay-tight vista is.
But i would in that case contact the manufacturer of your soundcard and ask if they will support control of your soundcard in Vista. Specially users with old soundcards that have uncertified drivers may walk a risk here.
Windows ME made Microsoft look really very stupid.
It is the flopped transfer edition to XP, nobody bought it because it didn’t had full MSDOS mode support anymore (it did if you used a special trick but in original setup you had to wave goodbye to your dos apps that required a dedicated claim to your LPT and serial ports).
Oh, I know Windows ME alright. I just wanted to know what is the difference that enables Renoise 1.8 to run on it when it doesn’t on Win 98 SE. To add to the list of improvements ME has over 98 SE you started: Newer version of Windows Media Player and 256 color icon support in the system tray. Surely these don’t benefit Rns.
Yeah, all things nobody was really waiting for. WMP, who cares, can download the latest version in 98SE as well but the general folks use WinAmp / QuickTime or any non-MS flavored player.
With some luck we will maybe see a linux-version of renoise some day soon (take a look here) and if that day will come you do not have to worry about expensive OS:s anymore 