I removed win98 from all machine some time ago. I had a 10,000 RPM hard drive and Win98 could not support it. Win98 crashed too often and need to be cleaned up too often.
Things I never have to do on XP. I have many DOS games that I play just fine on both my XP boxes. I prefer to be able to make changes to my Network, without concerns about the OS.
I like being able to have many apps running, if I need them. I nearly always have either an internet radio or Winamp going, while playing. May then elect to go to CFC and need/want to fire up C3C to look at a save as Moo1 is still going and so forth.
I have no issues with any browser steals or cookies, so no need to clean up. I go back to the first version of DOS and OS/2, actually I go back much farther than that, so I remember all the issue with Win98.