On Tuesday, computer technicians around the world drank a toast to Microsoft Windows XP. Most of this is due to the intense headache of getting people off the OS rather than any sort of sadness or contempt.
Don't get me wrong. XP was a fine OS. But the OS came out in Fall of 2001. In 2001, George Bush was president, most of the country was wrapped around the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, I graduated from High School that spring and was working on getting a certification in System Administration where we were learning to use Windows 2000. It was in that class that I caught my first glimpse of XP. First Impression; Looked like something a kid drew.
And now, almost 15 years later, Microsoft has finally had enough. The problem is too many people are stubborn fools when it comes to technology. The old adage of "If it ain't broke, why fix it," was literally what one person quoted in an interview on the news. They wan't it to work and to stay working. It didn't matter if Microsoft raised the specter of the unknown security hole that would go unpatched and would create the worst security crisis since Y2K. (Hold that thought for a second) They weren't going to change.
But times change. And now we are having to get people to update their ancient systems.
This is a lot easier for me right now. I was able to get just about everyone in the store off of XP and onto Windows 7. Most of these devices just needed to be replaced. And with the exception of a few laptops, the solution is fixed.
I can't say the same for our PoS Systems. No instructions came down the pipes from our vendors until I decided to work on upgrading and was told "oh no! you have to have an appointment with our sales support team before you can do that! and they are all swamped now." I don't feel sorry for them. They brought it on themselves for creating a system that requires support to do everything from getting a new computer to kicking a printer back online.
Then I get to work with Compatibility issues. The easy part, relatively, is trying to get the registers to talk via. NetBeui, since that is apparently far better then TCP/IP. This was easily solved by setting everything to talk vis TCP/IP and figuring out why the servers wouldn't take a static IP without loosing network connection. (Gateway was set. My bad)
But thanks to this, a disc cloner, spare RAM and a van that get about 20 miles to the gallon, I can probably get this all finished by Monday. (with about a week of PCI incompliance of course.)
IT is having a far rougher time. some 200+ computers have been kicked off the network (including about 8 of our laptops which are going bye bye soon anyway). A lot of these people received plenty of warning about this, and was even offered updated computers for free. (how can you not turn down a free computer upgrade?) So now their computer is not working, and they are mad as hell. Who do they take it out on, Helpdesk. I feel sorry for my friends in there right now.
So the rush is on to replace these computers that are now offline that they should have done long ago.
But the Windows XP crisis isn;t the biggest issue right now. Rather the biggest issue is a security hole that went unnoticed for 2 years. This bug, called Heartbleed affecting practically every system that uses OpenSSL...and thats practically everyone. Fortunately companies are racing (harder then the XP migration) to fix this as well.
Morton's Salt girl says it best. "When it rains, it pours."
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