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Some Windows XP Users Can't Afford To Upgrade
colinneagle writes "During a recent trip to an eye doctor, I noticed that she was still using Windows XP. After I suggested that she might need to upgrade soon, she said she couldn't because she couldn't afford the $10,000 fee involved with the specialty medical software that has been upgraded for Windows 7. Software written for medical professionals is not like mass market software. They have a limited market and can't make back their money in volume because there isn't the volume for an eye doctor's database product like there is for Office or Quicken. With many expecting Microsoft's upcoming end-of-support for XP to cause a security nightmare of unsupported Windows devices in the wild, it seems a good time to ask how many users may fall into the category of wanting an upgrade, but being priced out by expensive but necessary third-party software. More importantly, can anything be done about it?"
That helps with hardware incompatibility but not security.
Who cares if XP is unpatched?
Special dental application to track intervention history, show X-rays associated, etc should not communicate with the internet.
Same goes to timetables / reservations.
If they need machines connected for mobility : make an internal network.
I don't see such a problem here.
I bet a lot of that $10k fee is due to the software requiring FDA certification.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
It's possible that the machine is actually more of an embedded system, acting as a front-end for a device whose drivers won't work in a VM.
dom
A lot of "professional" users of computers (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc) seem to think that they gotta have really special software to handle everything they do, because everything they do is so special. Much of this is due to people who think they're smart being duped by people who are smarter into thinking they need special software. Is the solution here that these professionals need to do a better job of buying their IT support in the first place? Admittedly, there is certainly some software that has to be written for very narrow and specialized needs, but a lot of these needs can be met by pretty much off-the-shelf solutions implemented by people who know what they're doing. I think these professionals start off by trying to do it themselves (because they are smart, you know?), find that it's not as easy as they thought, and then buy into the pitch that they need REALLY smart IT people doing specialized stuff for them. I'd laugh at all this, but it's part of why our health care costs so damn much.
I work in a very large semiconductor fab that is full of dozens, probably hundreds, of DOS, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP machines. They will never be upgraded or patched.
Is this stupid? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No.
I just got done negotiating the purchase of a 2-million-dollar piece of equipment that comes with Windows. We actually have a purchasing requirement that all software be provided with patches as necessary, including OS upgrades, and that all source code be held in escrow in case the company goes under. However, when we negotiate the purchase specs, those lines get crossed out, because the vendor refuses to comply and we have no leverage, so we buckle.
Personally I think that anyone who uses something like Windows (a desktop OS with known, SHORT service lifetime, suitable for desktop computing in non-critical applications) in an industrial tool with 10+ year lifetime, should be fired immediately, and this should have been the case from the very beginning, but I was not around back then, and it became acceptable. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft, even when it's an idiotic thing to do.
Sounds like someone has never had to use medical software. As much as the "zealots" would like to think, not everything is best run on OpenSource. It's not a troll, it's based on 15 years working with medical offices and doctors that don't have time to figure out how to get things to work. And yes, a lot of doctors offices don't have any support on staff or contract other than the EMR or EPM company they are dealing with.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
In the linked article, the doctor couldn't afford to upgrade her specialty medical software.
1. It's unlikely that the version she currently uses does not run on Win7
2. It's unlikely that the version she would upgrade to does not run on XP
3. It's likely that the upgrade would cost $10,000 even if she wasn't changing OS versions
So what does this have to do with Windows? Nothing. The only information in the article is that specialty software can be very expensive. That fact stands alone and would do so on any OS and any version.
Has Slashdot become this gullible??
This is a really bad example to make your case. She has HIPAA data and needs to upgrade as her computer can't be patched anymore next year. No sympathy for someone with HIPAA data trying to get out of patching their system.
Now, if you had picked an example of someone who didn't have HIPAA data I'd point to options that could be done. However to be frank I am all out of sympathy for anyone in this situation. Microsoft announced end of life on this a very long time ago and frankly gave a lot longer on the EOL and support for the OS than Mac or any of the Linux variants.
This reminds me of the gas station owners put out of business by the new standards for underground tanks. They had years of advanced notice, yet they still refused to modernize something critical to their business that they knew they needed to. Time came that they could no longer be grandfathered in and all of a sudden a bunch of stations went out of business.
Why, because they didn't want to spend money for tanks that were resistant to leaks that could ruin the environment? A doctor that doesn't want to spend money to help prevent leaks (patient data) is no better than the gas station owner. It's a business expense just like any other and a business owner that refuses to give IT it's due as they should. Quit supporting IT neglect by helping people like this out.
How well does this interact with hardware?
We tried using a virtual machine to run National Instrument's LabView. It did not get along well with the NI Elvis breadboard systems we are using. Using it on native Win7 machines didn't work either.
XP mode is a VM based technology, though admittedly not the same as we used. Does it communicate better with external hardware than VMware?
I don't know the nature of the software she was using, but some I have seen in optomitrists' offices *does* run hardware. If that's the case, XP mode and other virtual machines might not be good a solution.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
You made your bed, now lie in it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That may be the case in some fields, but in most cases I haven't seen materials available online that compare to the texts that I use as a student in advanced mathematics.
That's an awesome way to run a business.
If your business is sticking forks in your eyes.
They announced their end of life date on the day of release. MS sets EOL 10 years from day of release on their OSes. Now, in the case of XP, it was extended. They do that sometimes. However 10 years is the norm, it is what you can count on, so it is what you plan for. Like with Windows 8 we already know the end of support date: 10/1/2023. It is always possible that will get extended, but it very well may not. So if you put an 8 system in place now, you know when you need to start thinking upgrade (at the latest).
MS is real, real, good with the support lifecycle thing. They have a standard policy, and current information is always available on their site. So planning for when upgrades need to happen is not hard.
The XP drop dead date has been a long time in coming, and is still over a year out. There has been, and still is, plenty of time to deal with it.
When I've looked I've come across a complete lack of material for most topics beyond say third semester calculus and second semester differential equations that one can read to actually learn a subject. While there are certainly some example problems out there, a cohesive narration of how to go about solving more advanced problems especially with a consistent notation seems to be lacking. Sure there's resources like Pauls Online Math Notes, but that drops off before then. Wikipedia has some formulas and descriptions, but often doesn't have example problems. For many topics, you can find small pieces of information all over the web, but if you want to actually read up on a specific subject I haven't seen anything on the internet that rivals a good old fashioned text book.
Now, I don't see any reason for there to be new editions as often as there are. Many of the textbooks I read in my spare time are actually pretty old, but outside of some of the topics that rely on technology there isn't a whole lot of reason to have new editions. Even something such as numerical analysis (which should probably have a technology based theme for CAS) doesn't really need to be updated very often as the algorithms don't change, just the languages that may be used.
Perhaps I'm just biased, but a well written text book seems much more useful than gleaning bits of information from a variety of sources that all use different notations and symbols for learning about a topic in math.
TFA was fine, until the writer threw this in:
And you have to remember that medical professionals are already reeling from a huge medical equipment tax courtesy of ObamaCare. One physical therapist told me of 14 medical centers that shut down because they couldn't handle the tax. And that's in Orange County. This area isn't exactly poor.
I call BS. That huge tax is 2.3%. The "14 medical centers" is an offhand rumor that doesn't pass the sniff test. In related news, a number of medical device manufacturers are blaming the device tax for their decisions to move existing and/or new plants overseas.... a tax that falls on all devices, regardless of where they're made. If Mr. Patrizio (or his Network World editor) don't like the PPACA, they can go to town. But, some research would have been nice.
Luke, help me take this mask off
College textbooks are largely irrelevant in the age of Internet. They only exist to keep publishers and bought teachers rich.
The textbook may be, but the content contained therein is not irrelevant. Regardless of whether or not it is printed on paper or simply stored as magnetic bits, should not the authors of such works be rewarded for their efforts?
You speak of the internet as if somehow resources magically appear there. To take your comment to its logical conclusion, not only are college textbooks largely irrelevant in the age of internent, but if everything that is needed for one's course of study is free and online, then college itself is irrelevant, too.
The sibling post made the point about finding replacement parts for when things die. That was always my motivation for a complete system upgrade - something dieing and needing to be replaced without me digging deep enough to find something that would work with the old system.
Buy new machine running Win7/8, install free vmware/virtualbox, run specialist software in VM fullscreen. Done
Windows had its time and place and it has now passed. Now the medical community ought to embrace GNU opensource and use this Windows experience as a lesson. Proprietary systems are not there for public benefit.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE