Re: Its complicated
There's little enough money to replace the obsolete and unsupportable without ditching kit that works just fine.
They also don't often update sw on ships equipments without a very good reason, because its difficult and expensive to prove the system as safe following such a change.
This. It's not just the computers that might need updating. Depending on whether the civvie company who provided the surveying equipment still exists, there may or may not be W7/10-compatible software to collect the data for your £££ towed sonar array. Or for the esoteric interface cards they use. It's just a floating version of the six-figure CNC lathe made by an obsolete company.
So if you were to upgrade the hardware, you could end up virtualising stuff anyway, which has some advantages (if it works and is stable), but eh, why overcomplicate what works.
At some stage Enterprise will go in for deep maintenance/refit and it will all come out and be replaced with the latest-greatest. Then the new cycle of bolting bits on for the next couple of decades starts again!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
