Microsoft Plans to Double Windows XP Support Costs

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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I wouldn’t call Microsoft vindictive about users still holding on to Windows XP, but Microsoft is clearly done with XP and wants to move on to bigger and better things. According to Computer World, Microsoft will be doubling the cost of Enterprise support rates on the one year anniversary of XP’s expiry.

Microsoft clearly isn't happy with the XP die-hard crowd. But for all its consternation, it realizes that if you're going to lose a battle, you might as well make the enemy pay.
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Ashbringer said:
You know somethings wrong when your consumers are your enemy.
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How long is Microsoft supposed to keep staff around to support an old OS. I'm sure Microsoft's costs keep going up and up to support legacy systems as they need to keep extra staff on hand to support legacy software/equipment. Microsoft is a business and has to make money for their shareholders.
 
As long as they are still making money, I don't think they really care if people are still using XP
 
Time2Kill said:
How long is Microsoft supposed to keep staff around to support an old OS. I'm sure Microsoft's costs keep going up and up to support legacy systems as they need to keep extra staff on hand to support legacy software/equipment. Microsoft is a business and has to make money for their shareholders.
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Exactly. I know plenty of companies that tell me to simply pound sand when they have updated their software, we don't want to pay for the new stuff since the old stuff works perfectly fine, and it will cease to even function.
 
Time2Kill said:
How long is Microsoft supposed to keep staff around to support an old OS. I'm sure Microsoft's costs keep going up and up to support legacy systems as they need to keep extra staff on hand to support legacy software/equipment. Microsoft is a business and has to make money for their shareholders.
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Plenty of companies have at least one legacy XP machine doing something that would require more than a new PC to replace, so they don't. If those machines get compromised those company's entire network of brand new Windows machine will be compromised and the cost to support those will add up.
 
jpm100 said:
Plenty of companies have at least one legacy XP machine doing something that would require more than a new PC to replace, so they don't. If those machines get compromised those company's entire network of brand new Windows machine will be compromised and the cost to support those will add up.
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That's not up to Microsoft to fix, those companies need to upgrade those systems. Microsoft supported XP (at no additional cost) for 13 years. Yes, there are additional costs, but it's not realistic to expect Microsoft to support operating systems forever so there needs to be a migration plan. There was plenty of notice, anyone still using XP systems in a production environment has no one to blame but themselves if they're compromised.

For the record, Microsoft announced that they would be doubling the cost every year before they EOLed the product. You can't blame Microsoft for everything.
 
Quix said:
That's not up to Microsoft to fix, those companies need to upgrade those systems. Microsoft supported XP (at no additional cost) for 13 years. Yes, there are additional costs, but it's not realistic to expect Microsoft to support operating systems forever so there needs to be a migration plan. There was plenty of notice, anyone still using XP systems in a production environment has no one to blame but themselves if they're compromised.

For the record, Microsoft announced that they would be doubling the cost every year before they EOLed the product. You can't blame Microsoft for everything.
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So... ow are you gonna upgrade a national level crime database program accessible only by the law enforcement PC's running XP ?

you might as well tell the government to de-fuck itself while at it too lol .

just sayin' , not my problem anymore
 
We still got customers who run their POS software on Win98. The workstations boot off a floppy disk lol. Some people just won't upgrade because of the cost. They feel like it should work forever or something.
 
Get many other vendors to support a 10+ year old product that has been depreciated for 7/8 years. It'll cost you. Don't hate on Microsoft (even though it seems to be the trendy cool thing again) for doing the same thing most other companies do. Either pay to upgrade or pay to support an old version.

I had to tell someone at my work to upgrade their workstation and pay a decent chunk of change or it's going to cost a lot more over the course of a couple years (aside from the fact that it was extremely slow and clunky and unreliable) to support. So, they are spending $7000 now for a new PC and printing hardware to replace an old late 80's workstation and hardware. After having the printer serviced about once or twice a year at 500-1000 a pop, and the PC (386) repaired.

It costs money to support things. It costs a lot to replace things. But, when you replace them, your support costs go down and efficiency generally goes up. If the software isn't compatible with Windows 7+ but works on XP - time to look at the software vendor for an update. You don't need to run XP to save $1000 on a 15 year old application. Time to upgrade.

It's not feasible for some, and I understand. Just don't expect the support to be cheap or free. A lot of things cost more to support when they are older.
 
No reason someone can't keep an XP box. Some random critical software still require older machines. Big deal - pull them off the internet and you should be good to go. Hell there are still valuable piece of lab equipment which still require DOS to interface to a computer. Go figure. :)
 
jbltecnicspro said:
No reason someone can't keep an XP box. Some random critical software still require older machines. Big deal - pull them off the internet and you should be good to go. Hell there are still valuable piece of lab equipment which still require DOS to interface to a computer. Go figure. :)
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Actually - now that I think of it- the DOS PC's will probably be more secure since they likely won't be even connected to the network. :D
 
ktk said:
So... ow are you gonna upgrade a national level crime database program accessible only by the law enforcement PC's running XP ?
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The idea is the people who wrote the national level crime database program are supposed to upgrade it. If MS has to maintain XP for this, the people that wrote that program need to maintain their stuff too.

Or is it a double standard?
 
ktk said:
So... ow are you gonna upgrade a national level crime database program accessible only by the law enforcement PC's running XP ?

you might as well tell the government to de-fuck itself while at it too lol .

just sayin' , not my problem anymore
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If they can afford a million dollars to pay for support for a year, they can afford to pay someone to upgrade their database.
 
Time2Kill said:
How long is Microsoft supposed to keep staff around to support an old OS. I'm sure Microsoft's costs keep going up and up to support legacy systems as they need to keep extra staff on hand to support legacy software/equipment. Microsoft is a business and has to make money for their shareholders.
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In the land of Windows I'm sure this makes sense but every other OS right now is free. Android, iOS, Mac OSX, and yes Linux are free. Updates are free. There's a guy sitting in a bathtub in Pittsburgh using his laptop to maintain free updates for Linux.

The business model that Windows relies on isn't going to work anymore. Do I care what it costs Microsoft to support Windows XP when Linux does it? People running XP machines are probably going to use Linux instead of Windows 7/8/10 if they're forced to.

sysadmin-meme-9.jpg
 
Ashbringer said:
In the land of Windows I'm sure this makes sense but every other OS right now is free. Android, iOS, Mac OSX, and yes Linux are free. Updates are free. There's a guy sitting in a bathtub in Pittsburgh using his laptop to maintain free updates for Linux.

The business model that Windows relies on isn't going to work anymore. Do I care what it costs Microsoft to support Windows XP when Linux does it? People running XP machines are probably going to use Linux instead of Windows 7/8/10 if they're forced to.
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Consumers almost always acquire the OS with a device, the notion of an OS as standalone software is vanishing from the consumer world. The overwhelming majority copies of Windows come with hardware.

The business model of Windows has already changed given this reality and the competition that's come with the free OS on a device world. That's why Microsoft created the free Windows with Bing and why Windows 10 upgrades with be free for at least the first year for overwhelming majority of Windows users.

Beyond the low end laptop/desktop market at cost Windows is much less of an issue as it's a much smaller part of the overall cost of these kinds of devices and when spending larger sums of money people want the top tier 3rd party support that Windows has.
 
Time2Kill said:
How long is Microsoft supposed to keep staff around to support an old OS. I'm sure Microsoft's costs keep going up and up to support legacy systems as they need to keep extra staff on hand to support legacy software/equipment. Microsoft is a business and has to make money for their shareholders.
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O look, someone who thinks that deprecation equals obsolete....

XP is a fully functional OS even today, given you understand its weaknesses, just like any other system. The amount of software available native for XP is overwhelming. When you own 95% of all desktops on the planet at one time, it comes with some long term burdens.
 
This is typical for everything. Had some equipment that is 20 years past end of sale. Support is now up to $5000 per call to get ahold of support and $2500 per 15 minutes that you are on the phone with them without a support contract or $750,000 per year for a support contract. If you have the current version of equipment support cost are $100 per call and $25 per hour without a support contract, support contract is about $1500 per year. Equipment cost $125,000 to buy.

So basically they give you two choices. Upgrade to the current stuff for $125,000 or they will rape you for support if you want to keep using their old shit they made EOL decades ago.
 
Exavior said:
This is typical for everything. Had some equipment that is 20 years past end of sale. Support is now up to $5000 per call to get ahold of support and $2500 per 15 minutes that you are on the phone with them without a support contract or $750,000 per year for a support contract. If you have the current version of equipment support cost are $100 per call and $25 per hour without a support contract, support contract is about $1500 per year. Equipment cost $125,000 to buy.

So basically they give you two choices. Upgrade to the current stuff for $125,000 or they will rape you for support if you want to keep using their old shit they made EOL decades ago.
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Heh, that sounds like EMC. We had a similar situation with their Symmatrix's back in the day. Support got to be so damn expensive that it was cheaper to get a new array with 3 years support vs renewing the support contract for 1 year.

I'm not sure why some people are getting all butt hurt over this. Maybe they just want to pile on the 'hate MS bandwagon' but I don't hear anyone talking shit about how Apple doesn't support OS X 10.0 (released in 2001 like XP) or RedHat for not supporting RHAS/RHEL 2.1 (released in '02 IIRC).
 
Ashbringer said:
In the land of Windows I'm sure this makes sense but every other OS right now is free. Android, iOS, Mac OSX, and yes Linux are free. Updates are free. There's a guy sitting in a bathtub in Pittsburgh using his laptop to maintain free updates for Linux.

The business model that Windows relies on isn't going to work anymore. Do I care what it costs Microsoft to support Windows XP when Linux does it? People running XP machines are probably going to use Linux instead of Windows 7/8/10 if they're forced to.

sysadmin-meme-9.jpg
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WIth a post like this where do you even begin. :rolleyes:
 
WillC310 said:
Heh, that sounds like EMC. We had a similar situation with their Symmatrix's back in the day. Support got to be so damn expensive that it was cheaper to get a new array with 3 years support vs renewing the support contract for 1 year.

I'm not sure why some people are getting all butt hurt over this. Maybe they just want to pile on the 'hate MS bandwagon' but I don't hear anyone talking shit about how Apple doesn't support OS X 10.0 (released in 2001 like XP) or RedHat for not supporting RHAS/RHEL 2.1 (released in '02 IIRC).
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That is pretty much what it is, people just want to jump on the hate bandwagon. Doesn't matter what Microsoft does people will bitch about it. Even if they do the same or better than everyone else in that area.
 
Exavior said:
This is typical for everything. Had some equipment that is 20 years past end of sale. Support is now up to $5000 per call to get ahold of support and $2500 per 15 minutes that you are on the phone with them without a support contract or $750,000 per year for a support contract. If you have the current version of equipment support cost are $100 per call and $25 per hour without a support contract, support contract is about $1500 per year. Equipment cost $125,000 to buy.

So basically they give you two choices. Upgrade to the current stuff for $125,000 or they will rape you for support if you want to keep using their old shit they made EOL decades ago.
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It costs money to train and keep somebody with enough tech skills and experience.
 
Quix said:
That's not up to Microsoft to fix, those companies need to upgrade those systems. Microsoft supported XP (at no additional cost) for 13 years. Yes, there are additional costs, but it's not realistic to expect Microsoft to support operating systems forever so there needs to be a migration plan. There was plenty of notice, anyone still using XP systems in a production environment has no one to blame but themselves if they're compromised.

For the record, Microsoft announced that they would be doubling the cost every year before they EOLed the product. You can't blame Microsoft for everything.
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13 years... you pretty much summed it up.

in the tech world things move fast, and 13 years has definitely brought many changes.

I would understand if this were a xp vs vista thing but it's not. Win 7 and onwards are fine and bring a more modern look to the win os.

I do hope that they add a better filesystem similar to ZFS to newer OS. That is one aspect that hasn't made much improvement ....

sure there is REFS, but that is not stable, and BTRFS has more features; and ZFS is even better with it's track record true end-to-end sum checking according to CERN.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
No reason someone can't keep an XP box. Some random critical software still require older machines. Big deal - pull them off the internet and you should be good to go. Hell there are still valuable piece of lab equipment which still require DOS to interface to a computer. Go figure. :)
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Agency where I worked had a piece of lab equipment that measured radiation in soil samples. It cost over $100,000 and used a PC running Win95. The maker only built about 15 of the things and had no interest in rewriting the software for WinXP. We just put that PC on a IP address that the firewall wouldn't let out to the outside world. As far as I know, they still have that PC and it is still running Win95. We also had to keep ISA slot PCs for years for several other pieces of lab gear. We finally convinced the lab budget folks to start using end of year use or lose money to start replacing the ISA cards with PCI cards. Was real happy when we could finally pitch those old ISA PCs.:D
 
My dentist is still using Windows NT. My doctors office just moved onto iPad's but were on Windows 98.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Agency where I worked had a piece of lab equipment that measured radiation in soil samples. It cost over $100,000 and used a PC running Win95. The maker only built about 15 of the things and had no interest in rewriting the software for WinXP.
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There are plenty of cases of this in the medical field, hell some of the software used is unique and the company that turned it out is long out of buiness.

DMV in CT just spent millions doing computer upgrades, the database was decades old and ran on DOS.

If it does the job it was written to do why upgrade? It often causes more problems then fixes in some cases.
 
gdonovan said:
There are plenty of cases of this in the medical field, hell some of the software used is unique and the company that turned it out is long out of buiness.

DMV in CT just spent millions doing computer upgrades, the database was decades old and ran on DOS.

If it does the job it was written to do why upgrade? It often causes more problems then fixes in some cases.
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Do what some others do. Run that program in a VM in a server room and connect to it via remote desktop (or Citrix or whatever floats your boat). That machine can only connect to internal resources and not out to the internet. Individual workstations are the only ones that can access it... Easy to move and maintain.
 
As I said before, IT is a expense that must be minimized. This results in some of the nasty situations that we are seeing now.

A few years ago, I remember taking a support call where the issue the customer was facing was fixed during one of Microsoft's regular patch cycles a year previous. Slight problem... the company's IT policy was that they would have a standard image of the OS and the deployed applications. That image was the standard image, with no upgrades, for a five year period. :eek: Quick question... how many nasty exploits have there been in the past five years for Windows? Mac? Linux? iOS? Android? Internet Exploder? Firefox? Chrome? Flash? Java?

It appears to me that computing has gone full circle. Once upon a time, you accessed the big mighty mainframe through a dumb terminal. Then, you had the PC where all of the computing power on your desk. Then, you had the file servers so that you didn't have to "sneakernet" the updates. Now, all of the programs and apps are stored on a big mighty server farm, and you access it through a web browser.
 
Disposed said:
WIth a post like this where do you even begin. :rolleyes:
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That I'm correct? As much as you wanna get into Microsoft's business model and how Linux is only 1%, the fact is Microsoft is the only one who still charges for consumer OS's. Android, iOS, Mac OS X, and Linux all offer free upgrades. They may not hold the market share of Windows but that won't last forever.

Windows XP is a symptom not the problem. One that started nearly a decade ago.
 
Ashbringer said:
That I'm correct? As much as you wanna get into Microsoft's business model and how Linux is only 1%, the fact is Microsoft is the only one who still charges for consumer OS's. Android, iOS, Mac OS X, and Linux all offer free upgrades. They may not hold the market share of Windows but that won't last forever.

Windows XP is a symptom not the problem. One that started nearly a decade ago.
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iOS and Android aren't desktop OSes. OS X is only for Macs and Linux has been free for decades on the desktop and that's not been anywhere near enough to challenge Windows on the desktop.

But yes, the competitive environment has changed which is why there are free versions of Windows now.
 
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