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Microsoft Charging Businesses $4K for DST Fix

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pricey-way-to-tell-time dept.

eldavojohn writes "Microsoft has slashed the price it's going to charge users on the daylight saving time fixes. As you know, the federal law that moves the date for DST goes into effect this month. Although the price of $4000 is 1/10 of the original estimate Microsoft made, it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for. From the article: 'Among the titles in that extended support category are Windows 2000, Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook 2000, the e-mail and calendar client included with Office 2000. For users running that software, Microsoft charges $4,000 per product for DST fixes. For that amount, customers can apply the patches to all systems in their organizations, including branch offices and affiliate.' The only thing they can't do, said a Microsoft rep, is redistribute them."

7 of 395 comments (clear)

  1. Screw 'em by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Manually adjust the clock. Just write a small script to take care of it for logins or as a scheduled task for servers.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    1. Re:Screw 'em by dotfile · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Umm, that's not really the problem. It doesn't matter what the hardware clock is set for, UTC or local time. In any sane installation you're only going to use the hardware clock until you sync with the NTP servers anyway. The local time is still going to change on a different date than the OS is configured for. If you have Linux or UNIX boxes and keep the hardware clock set for UTC, you're STILL going to need to fix the time zone setings for the correct DST changeover dates, otherwise all local times will be off by an hour between the new changeover date and the old one. It's not a clock thing, it a time zone thing. We're having to apply patches to every single box in our infrastructure -- that's around 15,000 systems, not including desktops. Those add another 100K or more. We've had to patch Slowaris, Linux, HPUX, AIX, and a few flavors of Windoze, and that's just the servers. Then there are patches required for Java and a host of other crap, don't ask me why they don't just use the damn system clock.

      The issue here is not the DST patch, it's the fact that Micro$loth was charging $40K for the Windoze 2000 patch. They justified it because W2K is officially out of support for patches - it's EOL or EOSL, I don't remember which becuase I pay very little attention to Windoze server issues.

  2. Re:Whoa by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The real question: Do you like George Bush [...] Or do you hate Bush [...]?

    No, the real, real question is: why are you so desperate to drag political bullshit into every story? Love him or hate him, GWB has absolutely nothing to do with how much Microsoft charges for a patch.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  3. Re:things that make you go hmmm... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a little different. You're comparing a fix for a defective product to a patch to change behavior to fit an unforseeable change in timekeeping logic. And, please note that these products aren't even officially being supported anymore (thus, the service charge).

    I'm not trying to defend MS, but there's no need to make dodgy comparisons... One can surmise that open-source users will likely have an easier time making this change, seeing as they don't have to rely on a corporation to update their binaries.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  4. Exactly by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is for OS that are out of support.

    If you bought an extended support contract, at the time of expiration, you get this for free.

    If you thought "I won't have any W2K in 6 months, so why bother" and 24 months later, the DST issue caught you - well, pay up.

    Or what value did those who paid for extended support get?

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
  5. Re:Go Linux! by kernelpanicked · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You would be wrong. If you check the last few updates fedora-legacy made to RedHat 7.2 and 7.3's glibc, the fix is already there. I work for a web host, where there are still quite a few of these old machines left kicking so yes I had to verify this.

    --
    Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
  6. Relatively Inexpesive by Christopher_G_Lewis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This fee is all inclusive. That means any product in extended support, and any DST related patch.

    So that includes:
        Windows 2000 Server straight DST patch
        Windows 2000 CRT DST patch (Never heard of that one? See here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932955/en-us/ and here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932590/en-us/
        Exchange running on W2K
        Visual Studio 6.0 patches (I believe...)

    So $4000 to cover *all* unsupported systems, and to have a human to call and say "Your patch screwed up my server" and have them fix it, is to be cliche, Priceless

    --
    www.christopherlewis.com