Microsoft chops the price of custom Windows XP patches | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft chops the price of custom Windows XP patches

zdnet.com

35 pointsch_12337 comments

The 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-bli...

Thank 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.

I don't understand. How did you lose your flagging privileges?

By 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.

I hope so too!

Seems like the correct original source would be ComputerWorld[1], referenced by both ZDNet and WindowsITPro. I can see why the interstitial and multi-page format would be a turn-off, but the the other two are pretty much exactly the same! (Props to ZDNet for getting confirmation from Microsoft, I guess...)

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247708/Microsoft_sla...

Can't read: it crashes Safari. Its interesting because it is the only repeatable why I have found to crash Safari on my Mac.

This smells like attempted code injection.

I 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.

The article mentions this. Customers need to have a migration plan (presumably to a modern Windows) to get the discounts.

It 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?

Did you read the article? They're doing exactly this.

I 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.

This makes it closer to what MS charged for NT4/2000 custom support before.

Why would someone consider buying this instead of upgrading to windows 8?

When 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.)

Aren'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

Now 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/feature...

At 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.

for 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.

Microsoft will do anything to keep its users on Windows.

And the problem is?

It'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.

Nah. 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.

No, 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.

Not 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.

"...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-...

That was six years ago, out of context of the extended support they provided.

Actually, 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

Agreed.

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.

From 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.

Dear Microsoft,

Better yet, open source XP and earn some serious cred!

Sincerely Yours, The hacker community

Wow, 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.

HN 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.

Would it be different? How much would it cost to find someone to pick up and take over support for RHEL4, for instance?

A fair point, but don't you think with sufficient demand there would be competition in a free market?

It 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."

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