I appreciate that I'm on my own with Windows 98. It was basically up there for old games my daughter played when she was a lot smaller and for a scanner for which no XP driver was ever produced. I haven't attempted to install SecCen 9 on that partition
When you say SP3 will soon be mandatory in order to receive security updates, are you referring to updates from McAfee, from Windows Update (as the thread you pointed me towards) or both? I haven't seen anything anywhere else about this (yet) and it would seem odd if Microsoft, having supported W98 for best part of ten years, left users who did not want to install a service pack high and dry.
My intention is to get a new PC (and a scanner) soon after Windows 7 appears, skipping Vista. I might have to dual boot that with XP, I suppose, in order to support some software or kit. With any luck I will avoid the shutters coming down on non-SP3 XP, at least while it is my primary operating system.
I could pretend that I made a principled decision not to install SP3 but it wasn't like that. For some weeks something was downloading in the background and this turned out to be SP3. Shortage of space on the hard disk was probably why it took so long. OK, I've arrived, it tells me - do you want to install me? Yes ... but an hour or so later the installation failed because of lack of hard disk space. I then looked up some of the reviews, which suggested (a) that there was little to gain if you were otherwise up to date and (b) too many people had suffered the perpetual restart problem. The rational decision at that point seemed to be not to try and install it again, even if I could free up enough disk space without hobbling my system in some other novel way (I've already shifted a heck of a lot onto data partitions).
If you are telling me that McAfee products may not work even now without SP3 installed, that seems to me another reason to ditch the product, I'm afraid. If my PC becomes less secure because I can't have up to date protection without installing a service pack I do not want, that decreases everybody else's security a little bit too. Assuming that everyone is, or is prepared to be, bang up to date in terms of hardware, Windows Update or whatever seems to me the antithesis of maximising security.
It is of course possible that rival products would be no more flexible, but with any luck I can research that before buying.
Sorry if I'm sounding negative towards your advice but if I can possibly avoid installing SP3 I intend to do so - and I may not even have the space available to do so!