water cooler :: Old 98SE box as a Linux app

I know a number of people here breathe life into old computers, once running Win98, by installing DSL. What I'm planning to do is kind of the opposite ...... take a friend's fast Pentium 4 box running Linux and add a virtual Win98SE box using VMPlayer.

History:
I installed Linux on her PC about two years ago and it's been 100% trouble free apart from not running Tax software and Educational CDs. Attempts to get the Windows tax software working have been frustrating and ultimately a waste of time. (This year after a few days of experimenting I located a version of Wine that ran the software and confidently returned her PC. She then did her entire tax return only to find it wouldn't upload the completed data to the Tax office )

Plan:
Since I've 98 licences from my dark old days .... why not put at least one to good use. More importantly this 98 VM will only be needed once or twice a year and by burning the finished VM image to CD I'll always has a clean and ready to run backup!

Problem:
I've not used any form of windows for a long time and my re-acquaintance with 98 has left me under whelmed and struggling to find the right apps needed to tweak it to some sort of basic usefulness.

Do I need to run virus protection? Are there any great new apps/utilities I should know about (keeping in mind this needs to be lean as possible)?

Cheers
rob
Here's my v0.01 attempt....

Full size
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/344/vm98se26ia.gif

Quote (skaos @ Dec. 16 2005,21:39)

Posted on Dec. 16 2005,21:39You can find a free antivirus package at: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

Quote (doobit @ Dec. 17 2005,01:43)

That's about the best free one out there. Adaware by lavasoft is a very good spyware/adware killer.

Thanks I'll definitely try it out I had installed AntiVir because a resident scanner seemed the best approach for a VM that will not be running often. Unfortunately the AntiVir resident program crashes from time to time

Quote (hawki @ Dec. 17 2005,09:05)

Hi This is not an advertisement but for the last couple years I have been using TurboTax on the web.. good luck

I don't think TurboTax works outside of the US but I'll look into it. The Australian Tax Office uses some Linux in house and their tax software is written in Delphi (Kylix), so it  could easily be compiled for the two platforms, but they won't do it.  

Cheers
rob