Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems

[Stoned_on_Coke]

lol nice avatar DoD.
By the way alot of work places don't like change because some of the employees have a hard time adapting to new things. And having to adapt to new things reduces productiviti, and a reduction in productivity produces profit loss

[phantomj104]

Yesterday We Shipped 6 Brand New Boxes W/98SE to The Faculty at one of our school accounts, ..their reasoning was because "that is what everyone was used to" and they didnt want to pay anyone to train their teachers... Sad Huh..

Cheers

[nihil]

I guess that a lot of organisations still prefer the "devil they know" as it saves a lot of training effort and cost. Remember that you have to cross-train the support staff as well

The other issue has to be hardware? if you change OSes as a global action you have to upgrade all systems to the minimum specification for the new OS.

I have worked on OS roll-outs, and to do it across 1200 desktops is quite a task with your regular resources.

It is interesting that the "prime resource hog": Windows Me is not on the list

Given the "slack in the Global Economy" it is not surprising that there is a reluctance to re-invest in new operating systems? In the UK, you would be looking at about $1,250,000 to go to XP on 1200 machines? plus attendant training costs.

OK you can amortize the hardware over 3 years but the training, installation and software goes straight on the bottom line.

There is still the memory of the great Y2K scam in the minds of "beancounters" and when times are hard it is their voices that are listened to?

BTW Dead Addict is have supported WIN 3.11 up until recently. It sits on top of DOS and supports Office 4.3 (Access 2.0 applications) As we were doing a major ERP implementation, these "in-house" apps were due to be replaced anyway, so I could not cost justify upgrading the apps independently (Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS as well!).

I think that laptops are another factor, as they are still relatively expensive and older ones certainly won't support XP?

Just a few thoughts

Cheers

[MrBabis]

Yee, that´s bad.

It could be good if microsoft makes simple freewares of old OS that thay dont support anymore.
And other programs. It is nice/funny to play with them.

[David Anasco]

Working as the Head of I.T. for a local library, I got really tired of playing the Windows upgrade game. Upgrading to the latest OS also involved upgrading hardware. With over 300 public access computers, not to mention the staff computers, this costed us tens of thousands of dollars. Solution, run linux on all 300+ public access computers. Now are are able to use older hardware for much longer, and eventually increase the number of computers we offer for the library patrons to use. The next task is to migrate/upgrade all of our servers to linux, and perhaps one day, a majority of our staff desktops as well.

Linux just makes sense, and it will save us (and our taxpayers) thousands.

[Sweetlissa]

He He.. not to mention the money being saved to replace all them computers your library patrons slammed around because Windows(ME specifically) crashed lol. Millenium is the worst I have ever used and will never go there again. I love my Windows XP.

PS I love your mood and avatar David Anasco, that is so sweet .awww

[phantomj104]

Hi All,

WOW!

BTW Dead Addict is have supported WIN 3.11 up until recently. It sits on top of DOS and supports Office 4.3 (Access 2.0 applications) As we were doing a major ERP implementation, these "in-house" apps were due to be replaced anyway, so I could not cost justify upgrading the apps independently (Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS as well!).

I did somthing like that in 95' ...only I had to do all new systems, went from Dos Ps/2's to Win 3.1 Boxes.. and setup training for Office also. Then if that wasnt enough, they wanted me to use the ps2 boxes to setup a WAN with LantaASStic for "distance Connectivitity" All with out the internet, and with ancient hardware..I finally called one of my friends who writes grants, and Got the money via Lots of red tape and a municipality grant.. to do it the right way..


But those were the good old Days..

Cheers

[FamStars&Straps]

Everyone probably clings to the old OS's because they're so much cheaper.

[Tigerdaz]

My college, up until about 4 weeks ago was still using windows 95, the only reason we upgraded was becuase on the CISCO network acadamy course that i am on now requires some wireless equipment and it just plain and simple refused to work on windows 95.

The rest of the main campus is on W2k as far as i am aware and have shiny new Dell P4s we still have some old PIIIs 500s i think they are. Funny our class does the most the technical IT stuff in the college yet we use the oldest machines and the oldest OS. I think far too many people get caught up in the got to have the latest version of everything.

Some companies i do work for do a alot of city bank work and the majority of all of them are still Win NT4 and they have far more ancient versions of weird and obscure stuff than that running. You all seem to focus on the secuirty issues of the older OSs yet i think youll find there are less exploits with the older tried tested and patched OSs than with more recent variants.

I wonder how many of you actually upgraded to the latest OS for a specific function not available in the previous version and how many just upgraded because it was the thing to do.

In my small Lan i run:

1 x P133 32MB Ram dual boot W95 & NT4 box also got another hotswap drive with 98se & W2k pro

1 x P133 32MB Ram with smoothwall

1 x Dual Processor Pentuim Pro 200MHZ compaq proliant server with 256MB ram and a external raid array rackmounted with W2k Server

1 x AMD 2.8Ghz with 1GB Ram running XP pro W2k and Suse 9.0 pro with incidently is the highest pec machine of my machines and crashes regulaly running XP pro

1 x IBM Thinpad R31 dual boot XP pro and FreeBSD 5

1 x AMD 700Mhz 768MB Ram with FreeBSD 4.6

Most of this equipment was purchased 2nd hand at minimum cost and does the job more than efficiently. Why fix what isnt broken?????????

[i2c]

3.1 rocked! I never managed a blue screen of death on that, although thinking about it i only used it when I was 10 for using microsofts games, paint, notepad and some BASIC programming :-)

People have probably clung to the older OS because of the recent viruses that had major media hype surrounding them, SoBig and Master Blaster have given XP and 2000 a bad name, saying that XP professional I have found quite stable, except on the computers at my university, but as MissMitterns said in another post, educational computers tend to be a bit flakey.

Also MS products are so damn expensive, and IMO i dont think that the support provided with them is anywhere near the level of support that can be obtained from the open source community.

Unfortuatly its just the change that is stopping more people moving over to the free OS's and other economical rubbish. The hospital service are doing a trial in this country on Linux because they can no longer afford the costs of the licenceses for MS products, I asked someone i know about this and they said they could hardly get there head round MS products. This is where MS has the distinct advantage, they captured the market early and some would say created a monopoly, thus making people think and learn only on one OS. For the people who arent as into computers as us this will resort in them having to relearn, something non computer lovers tend not to be to keen on.

Another thing that creates great debates in my cricle of friends is about the arguement that MS is better than Linux and Linux is better than MS, personnally if I was given the choice it would be Linux every time, but this isnt because i think its better or wot not. It has the tools and documentation I like, I like being able to play with code, work in real time, have more choice. But then you wouldnt use anything other than a Mac for some graphics work would you? and you might need MS for something...But people are all to quick to jump in and say one is better, admitedly, some have better features than others, if the world combined them all then we'd have an amazing real time os, with RISC archceture, that a large percentage no how to use :-)

i2c