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German Taxpayers Faced With €800K Windows 7 Support Bill Due To Deutschland Dithering

posted by Fnord666 on Friday January 24 2020, @12:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-were-told dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

German authorities are waking up to a Windows 7 headache, with approximately €800,000 required in order to keep the elderly software supported a little longer.

Microsoft had long been warning users, both enterprises and individuals, that the end of support was nigh - 14 January - and made available various ways of keeping those updates flowing.

Alternatively there is always the option of a migration to Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) with three years of free-ish support (because, y'know, you still have to pay for those Azure resources).

Finally, customers that had ponied up the cash for an E5 subscription could also be entitled to an extra year of Windows 7 security updates, through to 2021 (assuming the subscription stays active).

Blighty's very own NHS is an example of just such an organisation, having splashed the cash for some E5 goodness.

The position in which the German government now finds itself might raise a wry smile somewhere in Seattle.

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  • (Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:34AM (3 children)

    by toddestan (4982) on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:34AM (#948269)

    This isn't a long term solution though. Assuming they'll have to spend EUR 10M move to Windows 10 anyway, then they've just spent EUR 0.M to buy a bit of time, and the end it's just money down the drain.

    Now, they are planning on doing something like migrating to Linux and needed just a bit more time before rolling it out, then it would make sense.

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  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:42AM (2 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:42AM (#948304)

    Now, they are planning on doing something like migrating to Linux and needed just a bit more time before rolling it out, then it would make sense.

    They've already tried that in the past [wikipedia.org]. They're really stuck here, 7 is out of support, 10 is operating system canasyphilaids [youtube.com], and the Linux experiment failed the last time it was tried. The only thing I can think of is Wine on Linux, assuming all the stuff they need to run works OK with Wine.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:02AM (#948377)

      It is time. Finally, it is time. Shunned and almost forgotten, now it's time in the sun has come 'round at last.

      The Amiga will rise again!

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:45AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:45AM (#948435) Journal

      The Linux experiment didn't actually fail on technical reasons. It failed on a change on the municipal government and the promise of Microsoft to move the German headquarters of Microsoft to Munich.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.