Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
My oscilloscope still runs on windows 98. Back in it's days, it cost about as much as a car, and it still works. No reason to throw this standalone machine out.
I also recently had to work with a data logger that was from the era of windows 95. Luckily the software attached to it also supported windows 7.
Breaking: Linux Inc. stops support for Linux 2000 at the end of the year. Linux Inc. recommends to upgrade to Linux 25, integrating new AI features including an AI agent that will enhance the computer experience drastically. Devices that run Linux 2000 won't get any more security patches after Dec 31.
I work with a lot of industrial machines that use all sorts of weird old computers most have been running pretty much non stop for 20-30 years. HP unix, Irix, solaris and windows NT are the least obscure computers I come across. Every week it seems like i run into something new (old). We have a few running on PC98s with a weird english version of J-DOS, computers with RTOS's like QNX and LynxOS and probably some other shit that i have yet to encounter.
Sadly newer machines just run windows or in a few lucky cases linux. The IT department always trys to manage the windows machines hooked up to the network and breaks them with their anti virus spyware crap.
What a rarity. Another speaker of the forgotten magic... AIX, SunOS, and DEC Alpha to you my friend.
I'm missing those from my collection.
Wait until they hear about nuclear powerplants and similar things still working on PDP-11s.
I have a client who has a very very specialised radiation therapy device that works with a very antique iteration of Unix. Its software has been reviewed thousands of times over the years and so has the operating system. They have plenty of spare parts and both the software and OS have been custom updated to work with 32-bit hardware over a decade ago as a precaution,but no hardware replacement has been needed so far - probably due to the relatively good protection from background radiation and very well done temperature management.
Should they upgrade to a modern OS just for the sake of being "up to date"? Fuck no.
That would mean:
So. Is it bad that this is not updated? Fuck no.
to management: Gonna give me $100K for a new GCMS compatible with a shiny new win11 workstation that MS will obsolete in a year or two? How about paying for a new license (subscription!) and a marked up PC and a technician visit to recalibrate everything for the $2MM NMR spectrometer? And then have IT come in to install their mandatory security software that bricks the instrument anyway? No? Then enough griping about your compliance numbers. If it bothers you that much, pitch a proper ask for capital to the business and get IT to allow us to just airgap the sucker instead of trying to debug some corporate security vendor's rootkit.
Man I don’t know how they do it. The memory leaks in those old Windows versions were crazy! I don’t miss the weekly reboots on all of our Citrix servers. It could be yearsly but you know monthly for patching
If it still works for the purpose, it is NOT obsolete.
Stop fetishizing the new.
If it's connecting to the Internet and not getting security updates, that's probably not good.
So what you said is mostly true, but there are certainly people running windows XP thinking "I just check my email and read the news, this is fine"
Meh.
If the other layers of security are in place, the risk can be managed.
The problem you describe is from things like that XP user running as admin, a failure of security layering.
Security isn't just having all the updates, which is the implication statements like this makes.
I have XP VM's with no service packs that connect to the internet. They're NAT'ed in VMware to an isolated subnet that has its own firewall. No MS ports are permitted out of that subnet other than RDP, and that only from specific IP addresses. There's more, but even just this addresses most security concerns.
This is used for testing specific software that only runs on XP.
For me, obsolete often means that I can no longer repair an important tool if it breaks. If I can't get a replacement hard drive or video card or power supply for my ancient Windows computer, I need to think about getting a new computer, just to minimize risk.
I made an actual post about this last week! Old is getting better with how bad new tech is and the privacy and security over reach. You cant even get a new laptop or gaming system without forking over every data point about your life just to log in. Its absolutely stupid.
Unless you use linux that is.
It's easier to write "obsolete" than it is "single purpose computer often loaded with technical debt and risk". A computer is meant as a general purpose device. If it can only do one, it's mostly obsolete anyhow
That depends on how many things you NEED it to do. My kitchen knife is not more obsolete than my air fryer just because it does fewer things.
And this is a misuse of the term technical debt. Technical debt does not mean OLD. Finished software from the 80s that was complete and bug free has no technical debt. New software almost UNIVERSALLY has more technical debt than older software because nobody has cleaned up the first draft yet. A continuing, rolling package of spaghetti code, patches, unvetted dependencies, and jammed in features that are sold for subscription fee purposes rather than customer need is OVERFLOWING with it. That's what "move fast and break things" MEANS.