Realistically,
when you consider that W98 is several years old and W2K and XP have been out for so long, you can't fault Microsoft for failing to keep updating them etc... many a publisher will tell you the first 'fix' for a problem is to update to the latest version.
What's a little less than transparent is the suggestion that the Sun problem is some sort of factor here - Microsoft applies dates to all versions of windows these days, after Day X it stops doing SP releases and updates, at day Y it starts to pretend it never sold that version, and so on... the "end of support for 98 date" isn't down to Sun, although that might have speeded the planned demise up a bit - I remember that when I started converting to XP Pro (which seems a decade ago now) I had a list of dates for when M'soft were going to stop supporting products up to, and including, Win 2K.
Still, why not take the opportunity to blame Sun as it's there?
Dave