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Microsoft chops the price of custom Windows XP patches
- Piskvorrr 13y agoNah. If they announced this beforehand, they'd be vilified as "trying to extort money out of their longtime customers." This way, they're hailed as saviors of the endangered and abandoned.
- melling 13y agoNo, the savior of the lazy and stupid. How much money do you think Microsoft has invested in Windows since XP? A billion dollars? But that doesn't matter because this old version of Windows does everything that we want it to do. People should have to pay for being lazy.
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoNot to mention how long ago the support SHOULD have ended, but MSFT continued to extend it because of the amount of users not willing to move off of it.
- tunap 13y ago"...but MSFT continued to extend it because... 2+ years of extended sales to sell more over-priced netbook trash." FTFY https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2008/apr08/04-03xpeos.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2008/apr08/04-...
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoThat was six years ago, out of context of the extended support they provided.
- tunap 13y agoActually, less than four when they stopped selling XP. My point is, if they extended sales are they not obligated to extend support? "Sales of Windows XP licenses to OEMs ceased on June 30, 2008, but continued for netbooks until October 2010." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoAgreed. If they allowed the sale of products beyond the point of original support, we shouldn't be commending them for extending the support. My personal expectation if I were to purchase a system with an already outdated OS, is that I would receive updates for at least 2 years. Point well taken though.
- dmethvin 13y agoFrom a business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Before the deadline, the high maintenance cost helped scoot companies over to Windows 7. After the deadline, giving a deep discount (carrot) with supposedly hard migration deadlines (stick) may help to get another bunch of them moving. The key part is the last paragraph in the article: > It's also worth noting that there is a time limit -- which Microsoft is not disclosing -- on how long the company will continue to provide XP patches to those users who are paying for CSA coverage. And in order to qualify for CSA coverage, customers must have migration plans with quarterly deployment milestones and a project completion date.
- Guvante 13y agoI would bet there is another side to this. If I were Microsoft I would include in the discount a requirement to switch over to a Windows OS. Giving up $82 million in support fees (which they may have decided to live without) to guarantee a large customer doesn't use this opportunity to look at other options isn't such a bad deal.
- bcbrown 13y agoThe article mentions this. Customers need to have a migration plan (presumably to a modern Windows) to get the discounts.
- Guvante 13y agoIt mentions they are required to migrate but not what to. If they are forced to migrate to Microsoft why is this a weakness from them?
- Igglyboo 13y agoDid you read the article? They're doing exactly this.
- Guvante 13y agoI read the article, it says they need to migrate away from XP and acts like the reason for the discount is due to Microsoft being weak.
- dang 13y agoThe original submission [1] was both blogspammy and linkbaity. Apart from the content being poorer, this leads to lower-quality threads, as you can see from the first few comments here. Since threads are sensitive to initial conditions, this can have quite an effect. We're looking for the highest quality, most original source for any story. When posting, please search around a bit to see if you can find a better source. When reading, if you know of a better source, please alert us to it. 1. http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/microsoft-blinks-offers-xp-customers-support-contracts-cheap http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/microsoft-bli...
- shaggyfrog 13y agoThank you for taking a stand on this and making it policy. Back when I got enough karma to be able to flag submissions, I used it on linkbait submissions, but it never had any effect... and I quickly lost my flagging privilege. I hope this pattern of finding more authoratative and higher quality sources continues. It can only benefit HN.
- ElDiablo666 13y agoI don't understand. How did you lose your flagging privileges?
- dang 13y agoBy flagging too many things that a moderator thought were on-topic. Keep in mind that many people have a wrong idea of what's off-topic for HN. For some reason they think HN is only about tech and startups, when that is not true at all. Genuinely interesting posts from off the beaten track are among the most precious things on this site. Flagging those is like stepping on wildflowers. That's one reason why people might lose flagging. Another is just by flagging way too much (e.g. dozens of stories at a time). But I'd have to look at the data to answer in any particular case, and even then might not be able to.
- dang 13y agoI hope so too!
- chrisBob 13y agoCan't read: it crashes Safari. Its interesting because it is the only repeatable why I have found to crash Safari on my Mac.
- rbanffy 13y agoThis smells like attempted code injection.
- ademarre 13y agoDear Microsoft, Better yet, open source XP and earn some serious cred! Sincerely Yours, The hacker community
- ElDiablo666 13y agoWow, your comment is grayed out like it was downvoted but you've only asked MS to liberate an OS, which is something that should be supported. True hacker spirit there.
- ademarre 13y agoHN doesn't like subtext. Of course, it's terribly impractical to ask MS to release the XP source code, and that might even exacerbate the ongoing need for security patches. But look at all the millions being spent now, and imagine how different the situation would be if these enterprises were able to choose a free and open source OS from the start.
- rbanffy 13y agoMicrosoft will do anything to keep its users on Windows.
- harigov 13y agoAnd the problem is?
- rbanffy 13y agoIt's rather a valuable asset. They will do whatever is necessary to keep you a customer. I've seen more than one situation where they reduced prices by huge factors in order to remain in a competition. Sometimes, the credible threat of a migration was enough to trigger the high-double-digit discount.
- schneid 13y agoIt was nice of Microsoft to admit that their customers are moving to Linux: "We’ve been working with customers and partners on the migration from Windows XP since we announced in September 2007 that support for Windows XP would end on April 8. 2014. As part of this effort, we’ve made custom support more affordable so large enterprise organizations could have temporary support in place while they migrate to a more modern and secure operating system."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- szilardeo 13y agoWhy would someone consider buying this instead of upgrading to windows 8?
- cwyers 13y agoWhen you have thousands of XP machines, many of which lack drivers for newer versions of Windows or the hardware necessary to run them well, and applications that haven't been updated for over a decade... well, you do this to keep yourself (somewhat) more secure while you work out the transition plan you've been putting off for far too long. (And Microsoft is only offering this to companies that commit to a transition plan, although it's unclear on what timeframe and with what if any penalties if the transition doesn't happen.)
- oDot 13y agoAren't Microsoft's solutions to running XP stuff on newer versions of Windows pretty good? XP Mode works well for our exotic software, but I have no idea how it scales for many users
- ataylor32 13y agoNow that support has ended, Microsoft's recommendation is that you "only use Windows XP Mode if your PC is disconnected from the Internet". Source: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/feature...
- cwyers 13y agoAt some point you reach either enough users or an important-enough application where pretty good is not good enough, especially if you haven't tested it yet.
- kayone 13y agofor some the reason not to upgrade to windows 8 isn't the license fee. It's the fact that they simply can't because their custom app doesn't work on windows 8 or they can't afford to spend IT time on migration/testing.
- yuhong 13y agoThis makes it closer to what MS charged for NT4/2000 custom support before.