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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:12AM (4 children)
Can't argue with any of that. The whole free-everything works just fine so long as you've got an endless supply of other people's money. Not so good when you don't. I don't know how they expected that to work outside of the server market where support is 90% of your expected costs, and enterprise is the only place people will pay enough to support a 'free' ecosystem. As you say there's no way it works on the desktop beyond the hobbyist level; if it could, Dell and HP would be all over it, if only to save themselves the $30 a head Microsoft tax (or however much it is nowadays).
I've had similar problems with linux all the way back (my first was RedHat6 in 1998), where one damn thing or another didn't work, or was creatively broken, or looked nice but wtf, or was missing entirely, and by damn if Windows did it this way, we'll do the opposite, because contrary. And if it ain't broke, change it til it is, cuz old and boring! It's only in the past 3 years or so that I've started finding distros up to XP's standard of Just Works and Completely Functional out of the box. Not willing to spend a bunch of time on it anymore; either it works right off, or it goes on down the road. Aside from not going to pay the hardware tax, I loathe MacOS, so that's not an option. (I have a Hackintosh. It's more stable than a real Mac. Nothing else about it agrees with me.) I've had no luck with the BSDs.
And then about the time KDE got nicely re-functional, they done did that Plasma thing, and broke it all again. Okay, so now it finally all works, but lordy it's fucking ugly (that brutalist-style desktop with its micro-controls and featureless plains of flat white are precisely why I hate Win10!), and lost 90% of its configurability. The day Oxygen is no longer available is the day I give up and go back to Trinity, even tho it's not as stable.
At least, when I need something more 'modern' than XP.
Anyway, I do like PCLinusOS with KDE (so far...) and it's been very stable (and we joke about how every update is boring), but when I try other distros, 9 times out of 10 it takes about two minutes to go into the permanent Nope pile. And my requirements doubtless aren't as demanding as yours.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:11PM (3 children)
"Oh but we're protecting users from their own haste" is not a valid rationalization unless you're a fricking control freak nazi.
It was simple - ENTER meant ok without having to actually select a button, and ESC meant cancel, again without having to select a button. But no, mere users too stoopid to be trusted with such "power-luser shortkuts."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:08PM (2 children)
BINGO! Did they really think Windows (before 8/10, anyway) got where it did by randomizing stuff so it wouldn't be too foolishly consistent?? Yeah, that was what I actually liked about KDE: I didn't have to relearn everything I knew from Windows; I could just tweak a few things and life went on as before. Windows-like? Who cares, so long as it works well, which includes not annoying the crap out of normal users who aren't zealots.
And care to guess what's the first thing I noticed about OSX after setting up that Hackintosh?
The damn scroll wheel is upsidedown. Windows and the whole rest of the known universe goes this direction, so by damn we'll do the opposite. There's no other explanation.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:20PM (1 child)
That explains the hockey puck mouse - they think we're a bunch of hockey pucks.
It can't be hard to reverse the two wires that go to the scroll wheel ... maybe there's a market opportunity for "fixed" ("neutered"? "spayed"?) mice? "Mail in your mouse and we'll send it back with scrolling fixed for $10."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:26PM
LOL, I said something like that about the hockey puck mouse that came with my Mac G4 (given to me, wouldn't have paid for that thing.. pretty to look at, but embarrassingly low-end inside) ... one button because we can't count to two, and an 18 inch cord because if it were longer, we might wander away from the computer and get lost!
Mouse rewiring, now there's a market made for Macs :D Given that Hackintosh got a normal PC mouse, it's obviously done in software, and what can be done in software can be undone in software.... maybe it's their new way of forcing you to buy a Mac mouse...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.