UK Government Pays Microsoft £5.5M For Extended Support of Windows XP 341
whoever57 (658626) writes "The UK Government has signed a contract worth £5.5M (almost $9M) for extended support and security updates for Windows XP for 12 months after April 8. The deal covers XP, Exchange 2003 and Office 2003 for users in central and local government, schools and the National Health Service. The NHS is in need of this deal because it was estimated last September that 85% of the NHS's 800,000 computers were running XP."
Re:Why not upgrade to Chromebooks? (Score:5, Informative)
The UK government should follow the example of the London Council and upgrade to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. London Council Dumping Windows For Chromebooks To Save £400,000 [slashdot.org]
Let's see: the summary mentions that "last September 85% of the NHS's 800,000 computers were running XP" which translates to 680,000 computers. A Chromebook is like $200 a pop, so migrating all of them would cost $136,000,000. Not such a big saving, is it?
Not to mention that being tied hands and feet to [insert any company here] is no better than being tied hands and feet to Microsoft, you'd have a ridiculous amount of local storage and no control whatsoever over how (and where) your other data is stored. And I can easily imagine that they also have lots of custom-made applications that wouldn't run in Chrome OS anyway.
RT.
Re:Why not upgrade to Chromebooks? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:@aheath - Re:Why not use GNU/Linux? (Score:4, Informative)
There are a LOT of people that make significantly more money than you do that all of that is actually very hard. they freak out if they cant use the swirly E to get to the internet.
Executives are stupid, marking is stupid, sales is stupid. you can not change things too drastically or all the stupid people will start whining hard, and they are all above you so they can make your life hell.
Re: TCO (Score:4, Informative)
You must be so warped with hatred, because your posts are starting to become incoherent.
The legal issue of "reasonableness" is well tested, and it doesn't go your way (fortunately). Software cannot wear out, but the Sales of Goods Act is not about forcing an entity to support anything until it wears out, its about ensuring the product lasts for a reasonable period of time - so your car doesn't die catastrophically in two years time, so your fridge doesn't stop working a year from now, so you know that when you invest a significant sum of money into something, it can last a reasonable period of time.
13 years is a reasonable time, as is 6. And the software doesn't stop working after the EOL date, it just won't receive updates, so it hasn't even "worn out".
Its also worth noting that software does not necessarily fall under the Sales of Goods Act, or its amendments - case law in the UK provides for it as a per-case consideration, and not a standard entitlement.
http://www.mablaw.com/2011/03/... [mablaw.com]
So even "sticking to legislation" shows you to be full of crap.