Microsoft patches Windows XP to fight 'WannaCrypt' attacks

Hi there

I'm surprised people go on about Ms should upgrade XP ad-infinitum -- why --it's a product that had a limited lifespan and they extended it for YEARS beyond the forseeable lifetime they had for it. They gave PLENTY OF NOTICE as to when they would finally shut the door on it.

People like NHS or other large organisations could have used the power of the market to buy truckloads of PC's at prices we can only dream about as consumers -- HUGE quantity discounts. - As I've said repeatedly my experience with most "State / Govt" bosses is they haven't any idea of a commercial market place and get HUGE salaries just to attend Meetings probably discussing abstract subjects like "Frameworks" etc rather than sensible logistics as to what to do when XP ended etc.

If they really want XP then they should recrut staff who can do this for them - although not really a good idea.

If you've got an old fashioned Radio with "Valves" or " Vacuum Tubes" as I think they are called in the USA and one gets broken - you can't expect the manufacturer (even if they were still in business) to fix it --Your only choice would be to find a manufacturer who could make you one (very expensive) or find another broken set which you could cannibalize.

People are being totally unreasonable here saying Ms should fix this -- the CEO's of these organisations should be held to account -- and I'll bet none of them gets any punishment at all --however a few of the lower level I/T staff and contractors might well get terminated even though it's not their fault.

Cheers
jimbo

Wynona said:

Jimbo, I don't advocate Microsoft fixing old systems, but I am very happy they did! Especially since our medical fields seem to have hung onto XP long past its prime. Mostly the reason they have is because of proprietary software they use. For whatever the reason, the OEMs of this software chose not to update it to the next OS upgrade, and at the time, there probably wasn't something they could easily move to.

This is off the top of my head, but during my 20 plus years of beta testing, I have seen too many fellow testers who wanted to upgrade to the next OS version, but their proprietary software didn't allow it and there was nothing else on the market available to them. And no, I can't give you any examples because it's been too long for me to remember any.

Hi there
@Wynona

I can understand old Expensive HARDWARE - but that can easily be connected to a LOCAL XP machine - and data from that machine sent ONE WAY (Outbound) to say W7 / W10 or whatever .

Lab /engineering hardware has lifetimes of maybe 50 years -- especially large engineering hardware - and there's no reason to replace this gear at Millions of Dollars either.

But as far as software is concerned - I'm quite sure that enough notice was given for anybody interested to either supply new software or set up a reasonably rigid VM network where the XP machines were kept isolated from the main network. In fact it might make sense to have a totally separate network for emails etc so even if this Virus had got through to the Mail system other parts of the network would have been 100% isolated.

Just needs a bit of PLANNING and THINKING -- A VDI system isn't that cheap or easy to implement (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) but these people had ENOUGH TIME to do it and they could still use most of the the old hardware and OS'es until the Universe ends!!!!

Different MINDSET needed --- I'm amazed even today a 250,000 EUR / GBP / USD a year CEO or more hasn't a clue about Virtual Machines - even though he / she is supposed to be in charge of I.T budgets and procurements. - Makes you ask --What do these people actually GET PAID TO DO.

Cheers
jimbo

ChaChaLaBoom said:

good will has NOTHING to do with it. microsoft still makes a fortune off all the hospitals and companies even though they're still running xp, so of course it's in their best interest to do something.

That makes no sense. They're making a fortune because they are CHARGING those business for support of XP, which means they would get the patch anyways. This is a patch they are releasing to those people still running XP that do NOT pay them for support.

Fafhrd said:

To be honest, Microsoft is appearing to be magnanimous for actually doing very little - a patch which MS would have to produce anyway for the systems that are essentially Windows XP that they are committed to support until 2019 has been put on servers and tweaked a little so that unsupported Windows XP systems can receive the update.

Most of the remaining XP users will be blissfully unaware of it, I would guess.

While it's true that they have to produce the patch anyways for their extended maintenance customers, it has more to do with justification.

If they just said "Well, we have to create the patches for people that are paying for support anyways, let's just release them all for free", then those customers would feel ripped off, and would probably stop paying. If nobody was paying, then they wouldn't have the money to produce the patches. So it's a vicious cycle. They need to keep the patches for their paying customers or they would have no reason to pay, and thus the support would fall apart.