Beyond the Grave: US Navy pays peanuts for Windows XP support Microsoft canned support for Windows XP and Office and Exchange 2003 in April 2014 - unless you are the U.S. Navy, which is paying $9.1m a year until 2017 to obtain security patches for these obsoleted products. The Navy contract also includes support for Server 2003, which is unplugged from life support on July 2015. Our hats …
Shame the NHS didn't have the negotiators from the US Navy
Ever heard of gunboat diplomacy? Last time I checked Redmond is not that far from the coast. Granted, Iowa is now retired, but even in its absence the Navy can still pack some very good "negotiating punch".
I'm sure there are plenty of other XP systems in the other branches of the DOD. I wonder if they all pay a similar rate considering the DOD is the largest employer in the world.
...based on the fact that the NSA (and I assume they're friendly with the USN) can give lots of free advice on how to secure WinXP, given that the NSA probably know all the vulnerabilities, although as I type this I realise that if true (regarding computer systems generally) this didn't work out so well for the OPM. Perhaps they don't get the same level of membership in the US Govt "club".
Or maybe consider it in the context of $91 per year per copy of windows which is probably more than it cost in the first place.
I have said before I just can't understand how anyone considers it acceptable to have to pay a supplier to fix defects in the product they sold you because the defects were not discovered within some time limit the supplier set.
If not some arbitrary time limit, though, what would you have? It's a bit unreasonable for somebody a hundred years from now to unearth an XP box that has some critical data on it (for whatever reason) and contact whatever variant of Microsoft exists then asking for updates to the myriad exploits that will have been discovered by then, wouldn't you say?
"It's a bit unreasonable for somebody a hundred years"
No it isn't. If a myriad exploits are discovered it is because the software had a myriad defects to be discovered. I have a customer running software I wrote which is older than Win95. If they found a bug today I would feel obliged to fix it free of charge. If what I sold them is faulty I will fix it, that they didn't notice it was faulty for 20 years is irrelevant.
I just can't understand how anyone considers it acceptable to have to pay a supplier to fix defects in the product they sold you because the defects were not discovered within some time limit the supplier set.
Right now I'd (somewhat) happily pay Microsoft for another XP license, complete with all the bugs that it had at its termination date. BUT I CAN'T.
I am looking at an XP PC embedded in a microscope that cost a hundred grand when new, and which is still working and useful and another hundred grand to replace it (which is out of the question). But the PC is flaking out. I can't simply stick a copy of its disk into some other PC and make it work because it's an OEM XP License locked to that (ancient) motherboard. And some experimentation is likely to be required, so even if I could get Microsoft to transfer the license once, that may not go enough to solve the problem. (It would be nice if we had an installable copy of the software we need to transfer, but needless to say we don't, and the microscope manufacturer isn't around any more).
I've wasted a day on this Wombat already. I'll need to track down a second-hand Windows XP Retail license, so I can do unlimited reinstalls. They're selling on Ebay at a **premium** to the price that Microsoft charged while XP was available for sale. What does that tell you?
Surely MS could at least sell XP Transfer licenses, so people could keep their XP running until eventually there's no compatible hardware left for love nor money (sometime around 2060 I'd guess). But no, they just want to piss on us.
I'm sure that I read somewhere that in part of the contract to supply the DoD with weapon, control or maintenance systems, there was a clause requiring a 10 year withdrawal of support notification.
This means that the supplier has to warn the DoD of the date that the kit would not be maintainable 10 years before the support was withdrawn.
That makes the 3 year notice rather abrupt, don't you think.
Having worked with windows for warships, making a training environment, I know the following things about it:
a) it does indeed use both Windows XP (for workstations) and Windows Server 2003 (for all the servers)
b) it is such a steaming pile that it makes vanilla Windows Server 2003 look like a work of art
c) if they're offering those patches to you, you don't want them
d) the procedures for installing patches are detailed to the idiot level, but don't actually work when followed
Oh, and the civilians who install it and train the sailors on it did not know that it had the nickname Windows for Warships until I told them; they thought it was a very entertaining name.
So a fully costed, full patch support contract for a small number of Xp machines is $9m p.a.
If MS had charged $10 on the original Xp price per user as a "premium support option" to extend EOL (security patch support only) that would have netted about $400m, at only 10% uptake, for little extra work (the patches are already done for $9m pa for the Navy remember) and nobody would be complaining about unpatched systems ...
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