Windows XP's demise - sits back; opens popcorn

[Eric The Viking]

You probably know...

... Microsoft are ceasing support for Windows XP on 8th April 2014, including security patches.

It will become increasingly unsafe to use it after that time.

There are some ill-informed suggestions circulating that they've backtracked on this: they haven't. Anyone using XP for any activities connected to the Internet would be well advised to use something else. We've been warned about this by Microsoft themselves for several years.

But some are, apparently, in denial.

In a small cupboard near the back of the Floppy Disk Store of our glorious, best-in-class, National Health Service...

http://www.ehi.co.uk/news/ehi/9226/dh-looking-to-extend-support-for-xp

I can't begin to describe the stupidity of this. Wrong in so many ways, BUT a corner into which the DoH has been happily painting itself for several years. Will heads roll? I very much doubt it. Don't be ill after, say, May this year, unless they get a proper plan together.

Meanwhile, if you are running XP at home, stop it at once! Seriously, you DO need to act on this. There are several alternatives available, and I can't recommend just one thing.
Look at:

• Windows 7
• Windows 8.1
• Apple Macintosh
• A tablet of some sort (Android)
• Linux, which is free.(I like Ubuntu, personally but there's several flavours to choose from)

Whatever, if you don't change away from Windows XP before 08 Apr. 2014, unless you are very astute and PC-literate, and careful, your private data will be at increasing risk.

This was a public service announcement on behalf of British Taxpayers and anyone likely to need any form of medical treatment...

... Yup, I'm livid about this. The mainstream media haven't really picked up the NHS story yet, but it should be fun when they do.

E.

 

[devonwoody]

I have always refused to have anything to do with my banking on the internet and refused all cc companies and banks my email address.

So was I right?

 

[JustBen]

I'm very surprised that people are still using XP.
It's donkeys years old.

Do people still use Betamax and floppy discs too?

 

[Grahamshed]

Anyone not using Apple Macs should be on tablets anyway.
<ducking>

 

[MMUK]

I'm very surprised that people are still using XP.
It's donkeys years old.

Unfortunately, in my main industry a lot of the programming and diagnostic software I use won't run on anything newer so I'm stuck with XP SP2 on my programming laptop - I can't afford to spend upwards of £30k for all the new software that will run on 7 and x64 OS, why should I when what I have works fine? It's not been connected to the net since I've owned it though, if I need anything I'll use a pen drive in a Win 7 machine to download it.

 

[AndyT]

The mainstream media haven't really picked up the NHS story yet, but it should be fun when they do.

E.

"Fun" is not quite the word I would use. I predict that - unlike your very accurate and well-informed post - there will be bigger flurries of misinformation and unsubstantiated finger pointing. As ever, there are many causes and many effects, all tangled up, and the story is too subtle for headline writers.

FWIW I think the blame for non-renewal of the Microsoft EWA belongs in the Cabinet Office rather than with the DH, at the time that they were very keen to be seen cancelling anything associated with the previous administration, whatever the consequences. IIRC there was some talk of a bigger pan-public-sector deal that the NHS would be able to take advantage of, but it never happened, as far as I know.

And for a small ray of light, it's worth adding that quite a lot of Trusts knew about this in good time and took action to secure their share of licences for more up-to-date operating systems, before the people who could help coordinate distribution of licences disappeared into the last Krakatoa-sized redisorganisation of the NHS.

 

[JustBen]

I've just read that report and personally I don't think its accurate.

I have a friend who works for NHS IT and he has been rolling out windows 7 for years.

I also work in the health industry and I'm yet to see an XP computer being used.

I'm sure there are a few, but I highly doubt that it's as high as that.

They may also be including machinery that sometimes runs on a stripped down version but a lot of the machines are not online.

 

[MMUK]

A friend of mine is a Microshaft engineer. He's been rolling out Win 7 to banks, schools and hospitals/gp's for the last few years without stopping.

 

[JustBen]

I can see Harold who is semi-retired and in charge of bed linen stock control in a small village hospital having an XP computer but I find it difficult to see 85% using it and also considering that they have a corporate key given to them by Microsoft.

 

[RogerP]

However, research by EHI Intelligence, published in September, revealed that 85% of NHS desktops were still using the system, while just 14% were running the newer Windows 7 and 1% Windows 8.

That means then every NHS computer I've seen must be in that 14%. Big coincidence :shock:

Where are the other 85% running? Frankly I don't believe that report.

 

[Kalimna]

Justben - I work in a large hospital, been open all of about 3 years. We have XP on all the machines I have seen. I genuinely don't think that the machines (which are at least 4 years old) would manage Win7.
So whether you can believe it or not, XP is not in the minority. Not by a long way. At least in the trust where I work.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[Eric The Viking]

Similarly, many of the GPs I know have XP on the desktop. Most are quite unaware of the problems awaiting them.

It's only VERY recently indeed that the market leading GP record system user interface was C-worthy (i.e. underlying technology = DOS).

The player with arguably the best technical solution quit the market abruptly in 2012 (or 2013 - can't remember exactly), leaving the one I've just described, which has just done a rather quick migration to a web-based approach.

The significant point in all this is that Microsoft is most unlikely to keep the XP team going just to satisfy one country's department of health. They are the ONLY people who could continue to provide security patches, and they're not going to do so.

If I was a bad guy, I'd be on sunny, southern shores right now, waiting for, say, mid May-June, when it was certain support was dead. Then I'd come back to the computers and wreak havoc.

 

[KevM]

It's not just the NHS, the MOD are at it too:

Too many of our line of business applications, of which we have circa 1500, are inadequately
supported and we probably lack the funds necessary to move them all, in their current guise, onto
a new operating system as Windows XP goes out of support. We must therefore work together to
streamline our business, minimise our dependence on this legacy landscape and invest in retained
or new applications and services that possess a funded Through Life Management Plan that keeps
pace with future network upgrades and consumption methods.

Arguably the MOD's use of obsolete operating systems could be considered less vulnerable than the NHS because of fewer external links, and I'm sure somebody will have taken care to upgrade these external links.

Is the 'Windows for Warships' on Type 45 & Vanguard still Windows 2000?

From: DEFENCE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY, Released October 2013
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... _Final.pdf

 

[JustBen]

Justben - I work in a large hospital, been open all of about 3 years. We have XP on all the machines I have seen. I genuinely don't think that the machines (which are at least 4 years old) would manage Win7.
So whether you can believe it or not, XP is not in the minority. Not by a long way. At least in the trust where I work.

Cheers,
Adam

They build a new hospital and fitted old computers?

My laptop is over 4 years old and runs Win7 happily.

I visit South/North Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Cheshire and I'm yet to see one.

Maybe it's your part of the country?

 

[AndyT]

Maybe it's your part of the country?

Kalimna is in Scotland. The Scottish health service is almost entirely separate from the English one. It does not answer to the same Secretary of State for Health.

 

[woodfarmer]

There is an easy fix for this.

install linux as well. It will ask if you want dual boot so agree to that. then just boot and use linux for anything online, and boot and use use windows apps that you need offline. I run like this because it is much easier to use the windows printer software to change ink cartridges. but that is all I use winxp for. Linux is so much faster and solid.,

 

[Eric The Viking]

There is an easy fix for this.

install linux as well. It will ask if you want dual boot so agree to that. then just boot and use linux for anything online, and boot and use use windows apps that you need offline. I run like this because it is much easier to use the windows printer software to change ink cartridges. but that is all I use winxp for. Linux is so much faster and solid.,

I quite agree.

The big problem is getting the NHS to do that...

 

[Steve Maskery]

OK, I'll admit to being a dinosaur (even though I used to run an IT business).

I have a PC and a Mac. Both have given me grief in the past (I bought the iMac because I was fed up of the PC falling over - the last time I lost 2 months work). But since buying the Mac just over 4 years ago I have had nothing but trouble with it, costing me several hundred pounds, and the 2004 PC, since reloading a clean XP, has performed flawlessly. I wish I'd never bought the Mac.

So I tend to sit in the If-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it camp. My Office software is ancient (2003), as is my video editing software. But everything I have on it is of the same generation and works together. It will cost me a fortune to upgrade.

I use the Mac for email and surfing and the PC for Office and iPlayer. I don't do a lot else.

When I get up and running again I shall have to upgrade to an HD camera, and I think that means more up-to-date editing software. I bet that means a hardware upgrade too. It's going to be very, very, expensive.

So I can well understand why people take the risk and hope for the best. I'm not suggesting it is sensible, just understandable.
S

 

[DrPhill]

I use Linux (Mint 13), but find it far more convenient to install XP on a virtual machine (eg virtual box) than to dual boot. Save the machine state early on, and if it ever gets bent just restore from saved file.

You can have the Linux windows and the XP windows co-existing on your desktop.

I need XP for developing Android, and sometimes use it for Silverlight.

I think that the security of XP will only be compromised by NEW hacks and exploits. And the motivation for those is declining with declining XP use maybe?

 

[RogerS]

The mainstream media haven't really picked up the NHS story yet, but it should be fun when they do.

E.

......
FWIW I think the blame for non-renewal of the Microsoft EWA belongs in the Cabinet Office rather than with the DH, at the time that they were very keen to be seen cancelling anything associated with the previous administration, whatever the consequences. IIRC there was some talk of a bigger pan-public-sector deal that the NHS would be able to take advantage of, but it never happened, as far as I know.

......

Are we sure that it was the Coalition? Labour were also in Govt in 2010 surely?