Healthcare lags in Windows 11 upgrades – and lives may depend on it Enterprise plans for the end of Windows 10 should already be well underway, but some sectors are lagging, and there are other potential time bombs for administrators to worry about, according to asset management outfit Lansweeper. Working out exactly the proportion of Windows devices running version 11 versus Windows 10 is …
>"It's the only industry where you're not just worried about machines being down and revenue being lost, it's where human lives are at stake. They have a lot of catching up to get to Windows 11, or let's hope they all have plans in place to run those Windows 10 systems with an ESU or something similar."
Given the number of bad updates Win11 has had so far, I would wager that machines being down and lives being at stake is exactly why they have delayed that move as long as possible. Even moreso than most IT folk, healthcare admins (at least the ones I've met) tend to have the mentality of "don't mess with any of it until it's really, truly unavoidable".
From TFA: "difficulties with regulation, specific software only being approved for specific operating system versions"
This raises the question of whether the specific operating system vrsion is the same specific operating system version after an update has been applied and whether this conflicts with a likely requirement that the operating system be kept up to data.
Which means they are still in mainstream support until 2027 - 10 years.
Not to be confused with "IoT Enterprise", which is not embedded or IoT at all, and is in fact exactly the same as normal Windows 10.
That said, in general they are patched at much longer intervals. The machine supplier has to test and certify each patch, because Microsoft can't be bothered to.
In fact, a lot are considering switching to Linux because Microsoft support is so short lived.
> In fact, a lot are considering switching to Linux because Microsoft support is so short lived.
Interesting, I thought ArcaOS would be a contender. Okay it’s basically 32-bit OS/2, so proprietary (there is OSfree: https://github.com/ErisBlastar/osfree, but it’s not been touched in 9 years).
But agree, if long-term support is important your choices of platform become limited. I’m just a little surprised how long it has taken to get here, it was obvious when MS first talking about WinCE in the lmid to late 1990s they had no real understanding of the embedded market.
it is common for health care to have out of date IT
the problem has several parts
some diagnostic machines cost huge amounts of money and are supported, but the time and effort required to certify patches and updates , let alone a new OS is huge, so it takes time and money so update / upgrades tend to lag behind consumers versions
some of the smaller machines / systems run embedded OS's with limited space for updates etc so as long as no known vulnerabilities they are left in place until they fail then are replaced
add to that some old equipment may no longer be produced and supported or even the manufacturer has been bought or ceased trading
and with budget cuts so long as no risk to life the hospital etc have to get maximum value out of the equipment rather than keep replacing it every time the manufacturer tries to force an upgrade
welcome to the world of upgrades for the sake of it, not because its needed
We have one old bit of kit that runs windows xp (our last windows machine) ... to replace the machinery its attatched to will cost us £175 000. and the machine control software is only certified to work with that edition of XP.
It also has the warning "Do not attempt to upgrade the OS, any damage resulting from this will not be covered by the manufacturer"
This should be the reality now of computering/IT, only replace the kit when its finally worn out, not because the OS creator wants you to buy the latest shiney shiney
"But you could do so much more with the latest intel I7 56000 with a 5090 GFX running windows 13* " ... like what?.. our company admin runs an e.mail client, excel for finance planning and a payroll program to generate the bank tranfers for the wages. exactly what she did 10 years ago and that all she does** and thats the only time she uses a computer in her life. or the programmers who use a 5 yr old CAD package and still struggle to cope with the changes from win7 to win10.
*Will we get win 13?.. unlucky for all...
** apart from throw darts at the people who upset her with questioning the wage payments / panic jobs needing paperwork.
They are exactly the sort of customer that will pony up for extended support on Windows 10.
I'll bet many companies made cost/benefit analysis and decided it was cheaper overall to spend the money with Microsoft for extended support for an extra couple years and allow all Windows 10 PCs to age out and be replaced through their normal process of retirement than to upgrade and continue using them.
As someone who's worked in (US) Healthcare IT for over a decade, I suspect that many of the lagging devices are running a LTSB/LTSC build of Windows, which receive updates for 5-10 years rather than the 2-3 years for standard releases.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2019
If your health org does not qualify for 3 years of ESU (or does qualify but is too cheap and/or incompetent to get it), chqange health org ASAP
Since every single health org big and small qualifies for the firsrt year of ESU, you have one year to do your research and proceed witht he change paperwork.
I’m using Office 2021 and I notice no difference over any of the previous releases since they faffed with the movable toolbars, apart from all the OneDrive nonsense. I do wonder if M$ just rebadge the product every couple of years and make a big song and dance about “meet the new version” which is of course same as the old version and then charge bucket loads of money for it.
