Upgrade to Win XP home. Costs about £80. Well worth it.
Windows 98 is (effectively) over 10 years old now.
AFAIK, MS no longer support Win 9x, so no more patches.
Many newer devices do not support Win 9x.
Win 9x is horribly unstable compared to XP (compared to almost anything!).
I would suggest Linux, but I don't believe that it has yet reached quite the necessary simplicity for mass-market use. That's not to say the Win XP is bullet proof - just more user friendly than Linux.
SD