UK Government Pays For Extended XP Support

[Nigsy]

Windows XP is supposed to be dead next week. But the Dutch and British governments have both inked deals with Microsoft to continue to keep it on life support, at least for them—under Microsoft’s Custom Support program.

Not dead yet: Dutch, British governments pay to keep Windows XP alive | Ars Technica

 

[z3r010]

I think quite a few banks paid up a few weeks back as well, this it turning into a nice little money spinner for MSFT.

 

[user31]

I knew XP wasn't going away just yet . I wonder just how many other places are gonna pay for extended XP support.

 

[BugMeister]

also in the British press:
UK government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support | Technology | theguardian.com

 

[Solarstarshines]

I knew XP wasn't going away just yet . I wonder just how many other places are gonna pay for extended XP support.

If you think about it most Big Legitimate companies will spring for this simply because replacing the whole infrastructure will cost more period and doing all that and paying the people to do so can sore into the High Millions

 

[user31]

I knew XP wasn't going away just yet . I wonder just how many other places are gonna pay for extended XP support.

If you think about it most Big Legitimate companies will spring for this simply because replacing the whole infrastructure will cost more period and doing all that and paying the people to do so can sore into the High Millions

Oh, definitely, I agree with that. It will save more money to keep what they already have than to push a new product.

 

[Solarstarshines]

Yea and Microsoft will have a reason to keep it updated they make a handsome cut off a 10+ year OS

talk about getting your moneys worth

 

[Frank1]

Yea and Microsoft will have a reason to keep it updated they make a handsome cut off a 10+ year OS

talk about getting your moneys worth

And who said that MS was stupid?

 

[Solarstarshines]

Yea and Microsoft will have a reason to keep it updated they make a handsome cut off a 10+ year OS

talk about getting your moneys worth

And who said that MS was stupid?

It was that other guy

 

[HerrKaLeun]

so they pay to keep an outdated OS instead of paying for a new OS? Talk about government waste...

and they only had 6 years or so to switch... allegedly not enough time. the fact they buy that XP support now right 5-to-12 shows they have a lack of planning. they probably wanted to be on new OS by now, but didn't get it done.

I also would be concerned with employee retention and hiring... I assume they also have old PCs. Who would want to work on a single 17"screen with 1 GB RAM and single core CPU?

 

[kado897]

I suppose the real question is if M$ fixes it for the payers will they roll out the fixes to everyone else?

 

[Barman58]

I suppose the real question is if M$ fixes it for the payers will they roll out the fixes to everyone else?

I would be very suprised if they did this - what we have here is a private contract between two business entities, and it is likely that they would be subject to various confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.

Though with the security history of the UK government, it's quite possible that leaks will occur

 

[King Arthur]

Who would want to work on a single 17"screen with 1 GB RAM and single core CPU?

Depending on the task that is more than substantially adequate to get the job done. Besides, workers are to some extent a dime a dozen; if one guy doesn't want to work with older hardware then there is always the next guy in line.

 

[HerrKaLeun]

Who would want to work on a single 17"screen with 1 GB RAM and single core CPU?

Depending on the task that is more than substantially adequate to get the job done. Besides, workers are to some extent a dime a dozen; if one guy doesn't want to work with older hardware then there is always the next guy in line.

Not sure where you live and work, but it is pretty hard to find good people and you don't want to annoy them to save $100 on a PC, and you don't want to waste their paid time. billable time is $100 or so... so you do the math if an engineer has to fiddle with one 17"monitor and a slow PC if that really saves the company money....

 

[kado897]

Who would want to work on a single 17"screen with 1 GB RAM and single core CPU?

Depending on the task that is more than substantially adequate to get the job done. Besides, workers are to some extent a dime a dozen; if one guy doesn't want to work with older hardware then there is always the next guy in line.

Not sure where you live and work, but it is pretty hard to find good people and you don't want to annoy them to save $100 on a PC, and you don't want to waste their paid time. billable time is $100 or so... so you do the math if an engineer has to fiddle with one 17"monitor and a slow PC if that really saves the company money....

Different budgets.

 

[King Arthur]

Who would want to work on a single 17"screen with 1 GB RAM and single core CPU?

Depending on the task that is more than substantially adequate to get the job done. Besides, workers are to some extent a dime a dozen; if one guy doesn't want to work with older hardware then there is always the next guy in line.

Not sure where you live and work, but it is pretty hard to find good people and you don't want to annoy them to save $100 on a PC, and you don't want to waste their paid time. billable time is $100 or so... so you do the math if an engineer has to fiddle with one 17"monitor and a slow PC if that really saves the company money....

What I was trying to say was that more elementary things such as emails and spreadsheets and other basic office work can be done without requiring a powerhouse. You don't need a quad-core with 8GB of RAM to do word processing, after all, especially if what you have already is perfectly fine as far as getting work done.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
My experience of I.T in large organisations in over 30 years is that Management NEVER understands the savings made by quick response time and decent hardware. They only look at the cost of the hardware and NOT the people operating it.

It would probably take me at LEAST 3 times longer to do even a fairly simple piece of work using an old PC and XP compared to a fast modern PC running Windows 7 (or even 8.1).

Baring in mind that say my billing is typically around 100 EUR an hr (seems the "norm" for European contracts these days) and the cost of new equipment is say 700 EUR -- you can see it doesn't take long for the outlay to be recouped easily in productivity.

What happens is though the new PC etc is CAPITAL Cost in "Real Money" which goes on some lower level managers budget whereas my Fees are routed usually through purchasing / HR / Finance depts. which are another part of the organisation

The lower level manager THINKS he's appearing good because he's (or she's) kept or reduced HIS/HER BUDGET. - Like Blinkered Horses they can't see beyond their small part of the organisation.

It's not only Govt. depts --even quite large successful firms are guilty of this at times

Even if the employee cost is a bit lower than 100 EUR / hr then it still won't take much longer to recoup the money.

This is the CLASSIC article about fast response time written back in 1982 by IBM - mainframes were king back then but the article is no less valid today. !!!

IBM: The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time

Perhaps also too many modern managers - when they are trained at all use THIS too much to evaluate their strategy.

Mathematicians call the process as following a "Greedy Algorithm" - have fun on reading the article. !!

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/greedy-algorithm?track=NL-1823&ad=892911&asrc=EM_NLN_28024870&uid=8764353&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=NLN&utm_campaign=20140408_Word+of+the+Day%3A+greedy+algorithm_mrouse

Cheers
jimbo