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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?"
VMWare.
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.
Kind of like college textbooks?
*ducks*
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.
Yup. The easiest is to upgrade to windows 7 Pro or Ultimate and install XP Mode
Take an image of the workstation running XP, convert it to a virtual machine. Take your new Windows 7 Machine, load up VMWare.. and tada.. you're running in a more secure, easy to manage virtual XP environment which you can keep protected and unchanged for years to come.
Prevent those few computers that are running the program from touching the Internet in anyway. No networking services, web, email, ... or anything else. Make them strictly one function standalone devices.
Old disks die... new disks may not work properly with old controllers.
Can you still find PATA disks? How about floppy drives?
How about motherboards? or memory?
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.
If the software needs to be on the network, write a very strict IP to IP firewall rule. The rule only allows the box to talk to the IP-block owned by the company that requires that box to talk to it. If the software doesn't need connectivity to function, unplug that cable!
I mean, really, what are you doing with the eye tester? Running multiplayer game servers there? Stop that. This is a specialized device. It should need very limited network connectivity, if any at all.
Stop writing medical and industrial software for a platform that forces you to upgrade.
There's nothing stopping you from running X based *nix CAD software from ten years ago on today's hardware.
There's no reason to use Windows on a dedicated medical or industrial computer.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
True. However, there may be issues of vendor support. Some business apps are, and this includes specialist medical apps, mission critical, or at least sufficiently important that business may be compromised in the event of failure.
I know one hospital that recently upgraded their hardware. However, some of the middleware needed to make their various medical records applications work together, was only supported by the vendor on XP SP1. There were several problems:
1. The critical nature of this middleware, and the fact that the vendor would not support windows 7 (or even XP SP3) with their version of the software.
2. The complex interaction of this middleware with so many other apps meant that they could not run the middleware in VM as it would not connect to the other apps via OLE/COM or whatever non-networkable protocol it used.
3. The prohibitive cost of sourcing an updated version of what was effectively a custom built solution, and the fact that the original vendor had been bought-out by a new company who were desperate to kill the original product, but were tied into a 10 year support contract. So, although they were contracted to provide 10 years of support, they were only going to support the original config.
The result was that when the original hardware reached end-of-life and had to be updated late last year, the hospital had shiny new quad-core Xeons with 8 GB ECC RAM, and 15k RPM SAS RAID workstations with 2 GB Quadro cards running XP SP1.
Something can be done about it, whether or not you like it is a different story. All those computers can be converted to Linux boxes and I'm sure they can find the software for all their medical records etc. If they can't find it, I'm quite sure some coders would be willing to write some for substantially less than than the $10,000 required for switching to yet another version of Windows that will be out-of-date in a year or two.
They need to decide if they want to continue on this never-ending path of spending a fortune whenever Mr. Ballmer says jump. That's the matter at hand, spend a small fortune or do it for free or nearly free and not have to worry about the security of your customers. I'm quite sure some deal could even be worked out with a Linux group willing to help out if they could; although I know of no such group off hand. Well their it is, I told you in advance you wouldn't like it. You have options if you suck up your closed source pride.
Seconded. Either:
1. Run it on a hypervisor host and RDP into it or
2. Run it in a local VM using VirtualBox (which does surprisingly well running XP-on-7 as long as you have the VM tools instaled). Set the desktop to change size when its window does, auto-hide the toolbar, and it looks/behaves fairly similarly to a local app on W7.
I had a friend's business (which relied on an old map application whose DRM WOULD NOT run on W7) implement such a thing and it's worked great. Plus you get snapshots, which is enough of a reason for me to recommend just about all embedded/oddball apps run on a VM.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
I have a Doctor as a client and the largest cost for his upgrade is hardware, not software. I just bought a new $7500 server to beat the current system requirements for the EHR software they use. The upgrade cost for them is only about $1200 + services. The hardware requirement is unreasonable but the software is in massive need of a redesign. The vendor is always pointing fingers back at my client when the software fails (its already a decently sized server). Keeping the old server as a TS server to run the client (Windows 2008 R2) and the new server for the DB and the software (32 gigs of RAM, 2 RAID cards with 6 15K drives and 2 Hexcore Processors). If the problems aren't resolved they cant point the finger at me anymore.
The problem with this type of software is that once a vendor hooks a Doctor for any length of time, they are hooked for life. Migration is near impossible if they wish to retain useable client histories not to mention HIPPA requirements.
The issue is that medical devices require certified tested/verified drivers to ensure accurate results.
Due to the changes between XP and 7, some instruments require updates software with the corresponding "certified" drivers.
I recently ran across this with pulmonary function testing software at our mine.
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.
Yes, something can be done about it. Not overnight, but it can be done.
What?
Use Open Source.
Your either need to pay 10.000 because it really costs 10.000 in which case you wouldn't be making a case out of it, you would just pay for it as part as your making business costs, or it doesn't costs 10.000 but you end paying 10.000 because third parties controlling your business instead of you.
If you think you are in the second case, just ally with other "eye doctors" and make a software factory to produce the software in your behalf as open sourced. On one hand, you'll pay the real cost; on the other, the old producers will be forced to either down their prices to the new market standard or fold down. Any case, a win-win situation.
My old hospital was hit by this already. They couldn't afford an enterprise license from Microsoft that allows them to pick which version of windows to install on their PC's, (hundreds of thousands of dollars), some of our critical EMR software was only XP compatibe and would not work on WIndows7. When Microsoft quit selling XP and wouldn't allow us to downgrade our Windows 7 systems, we were in a bind. We were able to find some XP licenses in the wild but still are between a rock and a hard place. FDA certification for our EMR vendors is a pain and moving to the new version of windows is hard. I have no idea how we will overcome the sunsetting of XP.
My old Roland MDX-3 needs a parallel port but other than that I can simple send files to cut via the command line (ex: "copy cutfile.txt lpt1") so I'm still using Windows 98SE without any problem whatsoever.
If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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??
The only systems I run in to that are stuck on XP or below are some Win16 apps. Would consider seeing if they'd run on ecomstation to have a less easily attacked (if only by rareness) system if they weren't competitors systems. Our own Win16 and DOS applications were borked in to running on Windows 7 and a brief bit of playing with one of them on Windows 8 was succesful too - but the last one to be withdrawn from sale was in 2008.
To be stuck on XP you either need to have been extremely unlucky, or be using something ancient and likely unsupported. And if a normal upgrade for an opticians is $10k, we really need to move markets/country.
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.
Just because a piece of software needs to run on an obsolete operating system, it doesn't mean that should be their main operating system. Stick it in a VM and don't attach it to the network unless necessary.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Oh yes... the software world is increasingly greedy and hostile to the customer and it has been Microsoft leading the way from the beginning. And in case anyone was wondering when we would reach the breaking point? I'd say many of us have reached it or so sayeth the declining PC sales.
Things are about to enter a stage of incredible change and upheaval and not just in the computer/internet worlds, but all over. "we live in interesting times."
What about XP mode in Windows 7?
No need to upgrade to new software, it should run on Win7. There are multiple ways to configure compatibility.
FWIW, Win7 seems to be much more friedly to this than win8.
I've had two 16-bit programs (one used for point-of-sale another a game my mom likes to play) hobbling along since win95. WinXP worked okay (some compatibility flags made it work), Win7 was a bear to make work with the printer and the point-of-sale program, and finally win8 broke both of them. No application error message, just win8 says, you can't run them anymore (the troubleshooter recommends using winxp mode sp3, but that doesn't work, nor do any of the other modes from win95, 98, me, XP-sp2, Vista, or win7, w/ or w/o administrator priviledges, or in reduced color mode). The orginal publisher of both pieces of software are no longer in business, so purchasing upgrades to the new OS is a non-starter.
I've had to downgrade two new computers back to win7 and winxp (didn't have more than one spare win7 licence, so I had to reach back to xp) to support these programs for now, but now the writing is on the wall. I'm sure that my case is not unique and given my predicament, I'm sure that there are some applications that just won't run on win7 either even in compatibility mode.
If her problem is that her new software won't run modern Windows, maybe she can upgrade to Windows 7, but then use Wine to keep her older version running? (Although I can't see why Windows' own backward-compatability would be inferior to that.)
Yet again the closed source model fails society.
Anybody with half a brain checks compatibility before doing business upgrades.
Anybody with a quarter knows how to run win 7 with xp mode to run xp apps. I don't believe #2 for a second, OLE / COM don't do anything special that would interfere with the virtualized IO of a VM. I honestly just think people blame the VM when they can't get networking to work. If it required special hardware components that required drivers that weren't on 7 and had no virtual equivalent, that I'd understand.
I wouldn't say anything, except I somehow feel like my tax dollars are getting indirectly wasted by incompetent IT.
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 know what, I was thinking the same. It's good I browse through comments before rushing to the "reply" button.
Also, dental business is lucrative business, if you're a good doctor you can make 10K profit in a month. My uncle (retired dentist) used to make 12-14K EUR monthly profit in Germany on average. Granted, he worked his ass off in 12 hour shifts at his own clinic, but customers kept pouring in.
The real reason is "I can't be arsed to do it" or "the new version of the software is not backwards compatible" which is not that far fetched.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
No need to upgrade to new software, it should run on Win7. There are multiple ways to configure compatibility.
"Should" is most certainly not "will". There's a piece of somewhat exotic medical hardware I have the misfortune of knowing which has drivers which only work on XP - mostly because it uses an extremely cheap and badly designed anti-piracy dongle. And no, it does not run on Windows 7 with compatibility mode, and no, it does not run in Virtual PC either. Because dongle.
(Because when a piece of hardware costs $10,000 and up, and the software which connects to it is utterly useless without that expensive hardware - because it's basically just a dial showing a readout - of course a practical use of programer time is to add an extra pointless $1 anti-piracy hardware component to stop the millions of free copies which will soon flood the intertubes. Sigh.)
Anyway, tldr, yes, this is a huge problem in medical (or any special-purpose, critical-path) software. It's written by a hybrid of Ebenezer Scrooge and Bizarro Iron Man. Exorbitantly expensive, cheaply written, full of edge cases and bugs, hugely dependent on the manufacturer's support whims, will only run or be supported on extremely vanilla OS, and built without any concept of security or ability to work with a patching plan.
And then there's actual "security" software, that runs cameras and such, and if anything that's worse.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You made your bed, now lie in it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Shouldn't that work?
It should! But it probably won't.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
...starting with doctors buying software that's appropriately priced for their task.
I was involved in a full system upgrade for a medical facility. There were two huge problems that I had with the upgrade, and both of them had to do with the cost. After rolling out the software for a few million dollars, the company decided that the software that had been specialty-built was not going to work for them and a few more million dollars later they upgraded (again) to a better system. I've left since that second system was rolled out, but everyone that I've spoken to at the company has informed me that it's a polished turd (as much of that software is).
These small software companys CAN recoup their costs, they're simply marking up the price because they're dealing with doctors. All they see are dollars and cents and who *wouldn't* want to make a few mil for a years' worth of work? They get to take the next year off to travel the world and rent hookers until the next OS release, then they get to change a few lines of code and roll it out again (with a significant markup, of course). It's a racket, but I think they're just taking a cue from the rest of corporate America.
If you think you are in the second case, just ally with other "eye doctors" and make a software factory to produce the software in your behalf as open sourced. On one hand, you'll pay the real cost; on the other, the old producers will be forced to either down their prices to the new market standard or fold down. Any case, a win-win situation.
This is what I was thinking as well; just get together with peers in a similar situation, and 'Kickstart' an OSS version of the program, thus forever freeing yourselves from the shackles of proprietary software.
Plus, if you do it right and the software is good stuff, you might even be able make a few extra bucks on the side selling an enterprise version or support.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We have done 4 eye doctors offices with anywhere from 1 to 6 computers in them and the software was not that much to upgrade. We did an entire office with 3 computers, 1 server, and the software for under $6K. The software vendors all offer financing terms and many of them now offer it available over the internet for a monthly fee on a hosted / subscription basis for far less, like $100/month for a two computer setup. You can find all sorts of financing companies who will finance deals anywhere from 3K and up with no problem. This is a business issue not a technical one, treat it as such, get financing on the project and just move ahead with it.
We have people at the Biomedical department who are running extremely old, unsupported UNIX systems. Why? Well because that's what their special hardware requires and the software isn't being updated and doesn't support anything new. There's one particular setup that has an old Sun Ultra 5 that limps along as part of it.
You don't seem to understand that for some of this shit, the company dictates to you. Their software works only on one OS and they refuse to update it.
So you can't just switch to an X system because there isn't the software for it.
Software has a limited lifecycle. It's limited because it's not updated. It's limited because the OS changes. It's limited because it was never intended to be used forever.
Companies who didn't plan on buying replacements for their core software every 5-10 years are incompetent. I feel no sympathy for them.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
when you go fishing you may not catch any fish either
it might not work, but is there any harm in someone actually trying it?
surely there are IT shops that these medical people deal with that would have a spare win7 machine laying around
Anybody with half a brain checks compatibility before doing business upgrades.
Anybody with a quarter knows how to run win 7 with xp mode to run xp apps.
Assuming the client (here: doctor) has an installer for the software and knows how to install and configure it from scratch. That's also an assumption thats taken as a given for for "normal" software, but is not always for speciality software.
I know that because we used to sell software exactly like that. (At first because it depended on specific hardware and specific OS settings, then because customers got used to it and because we didn't have the ressources to pack an installer for a while.)
bickerdyke
And if the software fails or does nasty things to your medical data... who are you going to sue? Have you even looked at F/OSS EULAs? I have seen a few EULAs for Windows-based medical software and upon buying the software, there's actually some (not perfect but some) accountability from the vendor. You can sue them if they mess up.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
That's an awesome way to run a business.
If your business is sticking forks in your eyes.
She has had 12 years to save $10,000.
As a doctor, if she can't save $1,000 a year for a system she *knows* she has to upgrade (surprise, windows has a support life cycle), then she really is pretty irresponsible to begin with.
She is lucky MS gave 12-13 years of support on this OS in the first place (that is a really long time for them). My advice: Take responsibility for your own mistakes.
The problem wasn't so much with virtualized IO. The problem was the way in which the middleware communicated with the *client* software on the workstation. It did some horrible hackery where it loaded the other apps DLLs and directly called various interfaces exposed by the DLLs in the software to send messages. No RPCs or pipes in this software (which says something about the quality of the middleware).
No one could find a way of doing that unless the client software ran in the same VM as the middleware. This would have been an option, but these workstations did *nothing* else apart from run these half-dozen apps.
It was decided that it was better to just run XP on the bare metal, than load win 7 with nothing except VMware, which would then run the fully loaded XP.
maybe the medical profession would be better off pushing for linux drivers... at least with a smaller profit motive there is some semblance of stability
The only thing that can be done about it in the long run is to switch from pay-once licensing model to a subscription based model that includes updates.
Steady revenue for the developers, steady stream of updates for the user.
bickerdyke
My company can easily afford a costly software upgrade -- we don't want to because changing from XP means requalifying compiled product with a new version. As this is a mass-produced embedded product, changing OS "just because" is asinine.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is not easy to segregate networks like this. Remember that the receptionist might need the reservations app, and will probably need Internet access as well. So you're looking at two separate computers on his or her desk. Same with some of the accounting people - they still need to pull documents from the web.
The military already does this. It's common to have three different computers with different security levels on one desk, all of them air gapped from each other. But you're looking at three switches, three sets of cables to run, and so on. It's a lot of work even for an organization the size of the US Army, so it would not be feasible for a small practice.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
i have seen office boxes all the way down to a 486 running dos. taco bell cash registers are 486 boxes i think to this day. the fact is basic info storing or number crunching boxes used in a offline setting have no need in ever upgrading unless they get broken.
I'm still running iOS5 on my iPhone4 and iPad2 ignoring plaintive bleats that I think are "upgrade me" whimpers. Why? Bezos bought Lexcycle, which made Stanza. He's suppressed updates because it makes any Kindle look like the junk it is.
I won't upgrade my iOS until there's a Stanza update that runs on it.
XP mode has the same vulnerabilities as XP. Its support will stop when the XP support stops.
The problem is not XP. The problem is speciality software vendors charging ten grand for a software update.
This kind of stuff is why it costs the rest of us $2120.14 to have a hangnail treated at our MD.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Should be done sometime this decade. Along with Doom 4.
I work in a gov't lab, and we have lots of $100k instruments that are running Windows 95, 98 and XP. Many are not upgradeable, as the instruments are locked into specific proprietary I/O cards, mostly ISA. Most do not have USB. We bought a $50k instrument two years ago that had XP as the OS. I asked management why we would buy a new instrument that shipped with an obsolete operating system and was told "That's the way it came." I find it hard to believe that an instrument manufacturer can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of R&D money to improve their instruments and yet can not afford to update their software to run on non-obsolete operating systems.
Very often I noticed that the industry software some small businesses use could be replaced with more standard solutions. I recently had to deal with a stonemason and his software. These days they plot stencils and sandblast the letters. I didn’t like the few fonts he offered for tombstones and there was no way to make a file for him he could import. As it turned out he would have had to buy an additional (very expensive) module for the program he uses to import other fonts or any vector graphic format at all. During my research I discovered that his “special stone mason software” was more or less a repackaged plotter software which would be more powerful and cheaper if bought directly from the source.
If your software is so insanely mission critical (running on XP?) that a driver certification issue is a major legal liability, then you've already built the cost of hw/sw into the cost of doing business, and you pay the $10k for the new stuff.
More than likely, in situations as described by the OP, your customer database isn't so ridiculously fanciful or connected to anything life-saving, and it's actually a non-issue. Test it in compatibility mode, and if that doesn't work, look for a solution that isn't going to come with absurd vendor lock-in.
XP mode runs over Virtual PC, which is not exactly a well polished and bug free virtual machine implementation. It has quite a collection of issues.
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.
Either run the software on windows 7 in xp compatibility mode or run the xp in a Virtual Machine like vmware or virtualbox on windows 7 or linux host. At my company, I'm running netware 5.1(old early 1990's 2 custom program no source code that ran on netware 3 but migrated to 5.1 and 6.5) and netware 6.5 both in virtual machines temporarily in opensuse until we migrate the old software data to the new software on windows server 2012. No issues.
What's the Custom Medical Software database back end it's running on or is it a custom one?FoxPro, MS sql, MySql,MS access(hahahaha, can't be this)?????
From what I've seen, professionals are generally super-penny pinchers. Something to do with the fact that they've went through university and all that extra training and therefore are smarter that the general population and thus know better, or something.
I had to have some surgery done, and the consults with the surgeons were done in offices that really showed their age - being run down and everything. The computers they used were basically the best buy special of the week - the generally cheapass ones.
Likewise, if you go to see an attorney, they may have the nicest offices, but have IT equipment from the dark ages - again, the best buy special computers on the desk, some old PC serving as the "file server" and the like. And the IT guy is probably harried and underpaid, looking around for the next opportunity.
IN essence, the computer is just a tool in their toolbelt. If it works, they won't bother with maintenance. Upgrading is a possibility, but it's a tool. What they have now works, and unless they're shown a compelling reason to upgrade they won't spend a dime on it. They probably don't care that XP won't be supported anymore - if it works now, it's not worth spending money on it.
You can yell and scream and shout, but all they hear is "money money money flowing out". And yes, that $10,000 they save by not upgrading means it's $10,000 that can be spent elsewhere buying something else or doing something related to their line of business. Even if something needs upgrading (e.g., the old crufty 7-year old desktop repurposed as a server is dying every 5 minutes rather than needing a reboot hourly), they'll just find something else to replace it with - perhaps another old crufty desktop that was the receiptionist's PC from when they started years ago.
And yes, they're very receptive of open-source, because all they hear is free! free! free! (beer).
>> many expecting Microsoft's upcoming end-of-support for XP to cause a security nightmare of unsupported Windows devices in the wild,
Microsoft no longer supporting XP will hardly change anything. Their support is most usually crap and behind the curve anyway.
If you cant afford to maintain your vehicle, you cant afford a vehicle. Same goes with computing. Can you say Windows 7 with XP mode? Come on peeps, quit crying and get over it already. I am sick and tired of users coming to me crying about a few bucks, just try doing this stuff manually. Would cost hundreds of thousands if not millions.
Sticking forks in others' eyes is a great way to get return customers in the eye care industry!
What about the $10,000 minimum per violation HIPAA fine for willful neglect but violation is corrected within the required time period? Or $50,000 per violation fine for non correction?
The avionics business is the same way. A navigational radio or altimeter LRU, developed and certified with tools that run on Windows 98/95, must maintain the machines and various tools is was developed on until the product is 'sun setted' (which is at leased 20 years). One company maintains a VAX 11/780 due to the nature of the product still being in the field.
XP is 12 years old. It'll be 13 when it's EOL'd.
...why are you measuring from when it was first sold, not when it was last bought. The XP lifecycle is a little strange as it was so awful it needed a major (and pretty good) service pack 2. Even when Vista was released many machines (famously those on i915) ran badly...or not at all; many machines still came without Vista. In fact a whole range of machines (nettops and netbooks) still came with XP until Microsoft killed it with and the whole net* products with Windows starter (and crippled intel hardware), fortunately those come with Android, iOS and Chrome now. The minimum lifespan of a proprietary OS should *safely* be 7 years from "end of sale" otherwise its going to create a nightmare. In cotext of this article Net Applications still has 40% of users running XP.
except these systems need internet access due to electronic records requirements. All insurance and medicare billing is done using electronic transfer over the internet.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If after using the truck for 13years (how long XP has been out)
Except if your buy a truck its age is not measured from when it was released but then you bought it. Its actually the same for software. most people did not get XP on the say it was released :)
And when he said 10+ years he really ment 30 years.
You are correct about support of general computing OSes but the the dude was talking more along the lines of not using any general computing platform at all.
Regarding, the vendors crappy attitude, absolutely they're barstards. Welcome to the free market, everyone gets to be barstards. Ties in nicely with the choice of patform I guess.
yep, I have an XP system not connected to the internet and it ***never*** crashes. I have other computers for internet though I use a usb stick to move things back and forth. Yes, I know you all computer experts will cry foul, mod down, call me an idiot, etc. and I do many things with that non-connected XP (none involve playing old games or watching old movies). I have a few programs whether it be radio RSS, photoshop, Nero, MS office stuff, other odd stuff and all seem to work fine. OK, so I know there is some risk of virus getting transported on the usb stick. With the other PC on the internet, occasionally some programs just don't seem to work, i.e. BK radio software crashes or the crop feature in Photoshop no longer works. Non-connected PC works just fine, in fact I have it running Outpost with the terminal and logger continously to see if I can pickup Phonesat packet data.
mfwright@batnet.com
I predict a huge number of The Daily WTF posts about poorly written, slow, "designed" by someone who really didn't get the problem domain, in about 6-12 months.
I would expect if her 100k hardware failed she'd have a maintenance plan, and if that didn't work, could get financing for a new one. Financing new software might be more difficult.
And no, it does not run on Windows 7 with compatibility mode, and no, it does not run in Virtual PC either. Because dongle.
VM does not preclude dongle use. There are lots of network based "virtual USB" devices which work just fine. We are using them at work for a couple of different virtualized apps. P2V, network dongle, good to go.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Sounds like they need a version of Wine for Windows 8.
The issue is that medical devices require certified tested/verified drivers to ensure accurate results.
Medical records software is not a medical device. Now, *maybe* the system in question interfaces directly to some medical device, but probably not--most medical records software, *especially* for small practices, does not.
Band together and fund an Open Source project..
If you own a house, you get familiar with that kind of thing. I had to replace my A/C a couple years ago. Ran me about $7000 for a nice efficient one. Well guess what? That won't be the last time I have to replace it. So it is something I'm budgeting for. Not now, not next year, but in the future (I'm targeting 15-20 years out of this unit) I'll need to get a new one. So I'm making sure, to the best of my ability, that I'll have the money lined up. Same for other appliances, vehicle, and so on.
This is just life. Unless you rent everything, you will be replacing things and the more you own, like a house or, say, your own business, the more big ticket stuff that will involve. That means you have to plan as to the lifecycle and be ready for the expense.
Now for Windows OS related things that's pretty easy since Microsoft announces their lifecycle on OS release. So say you bought a product today that ran on Windows 7. It won't work on 8, and thus presumably later versions, and is not likely to be updated. Ok, that means that before January 14, 2020, you need to switch to something new. You have a little less than 7 years. So budget accordingly. If you software runs you $10k, then you need to save up around $1500/year (or $125/month if you like) to be ready for it.
If you can't deal with that, well life in general will cause you some headaches and you probably shouldn't be running your own business. Planning finances is a big part of it, you do have to think long term and you have to deal with some expensive shit.
Dream on, eye doctors don't have time to manage and QA an open source project. they're not even qualified to do so. and to think they'd risk money on a multi-year project with uncertain outcome is ridiculous
Based on some limited experience (largely post-mortems on failed medical software deliveries), and assuming that any sort of patient records are going into the system, I'm comfortable guessing that the "kickstart" cost will run to tens of millions of dollars. The big companies that play in this specialized field have entire groups dedicated to tracking the changes in federal and state government requirements. The people who use the software are going to insist on support contracts to keep the software in compliance as those changes appear.
A tool used in business should reduce the cost of doing business by reducing labor or increase the output of the business to more than pay for the tool. If it is not possible to justify the reported $10,000 cost then go back to paper and pencil.
If "others" (competitors) are able to buy the tool and this business is not then the problem is with the fundamental profitability of the business.
This looks like an ad for Software as a Service. The cost is clear, incremental and the obligations of the vendor are called out clearly in a contract. The cost/benefit is clear and the vendor needs to keep his product and his customer competitive in order for the revenue stream to continue.
More details:
- Use a secured host. Either Linux or Windows 7 (depends if Firefox + openoffice.org would be enough or not) but either has to be up-to-date.
- Run as much as possible software outside the VM using modern up-to-date software (if a browser is required, see if firefox running outside the VM does the job, or if you're stuck with IE 7).
- Isolate as much as possible the guest. (Guest shouldn't have ANY outside access at all, guest should only have a limited access to the host, host should be heavily firewalled against guest).
- If the medical software requires web access: provide it by having a secure web proxy running on the host.
(ev. use a virus-scanning plugin on the proxy).
- Think of ways to scan the content of the virtual disk from outside the VM.
(For example, have an actual LVM logical volume used as virtual disk. Snapshot it, mount the snapshot read-only on the hose and scan it, while the guest is still running).
- Think to make it easy to use: The best would be to run the VM in a mode where the guest's windows are displayed as normal windows on the host, and the guest desktop is hidden. Thus the user doesn't have to think about a "windows XP inside a window".
It's not perfect. But it's a quite sophisticated configuration to avoid putting the computer at risk, just because XP isn't upgraded anymore.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Can anything be done about it? Yes. Don't use third-party software that you don't own the source-code in first place. You're asking to be put in such a position. No, you aren't asking, you're begging for it. Buuut people do need to feel it in the hardest way to learn the lesson, don't they?
For the ones who already are in such a mess, virtualize it. And do not repeat the same mistake.
Ok, so now, try to buy medical software using that paradigm. And I don't mean someone's genome sequencing project in college, but actual software rated for front line medical use. This is not a question of MS Office vs Open Office. It's a whole 'nother world.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'll bet the software vendor would accept monthly payments or (these days) probably offer the software for a subscription rather than $10k up front. Better than someone hanging on to old software for years and years.
If you know enough about virtual machines and provisioning, there is a good market for your skills. Install a good distro of linux, install a virtual machine server, provision a XP machine, using the old license. Set up proper firewall and a hardwired whitelist access hosts file. Make the old software work in new machine. Profit.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...is it really that they can't afford it or is it that they're just cheap? Maybe I'm suffering from the "all doctors are rich" stereotype but if you needed to spend $10,000 to renew some sort of professional license or qualification in order to continue practicing medicine, you'd find a way to get that $10,000, right? Why is it acceptable to be a cheap bastard when it comes to software? Maybe the "what can be done about it" is that these vendors build in a "end of life" like Quicken does.
There seems to be a profound misunderstanding in her about what operating systems do. The OS is not the application. To non-geeks in the field, it's just a program loader and a set of basic resources that their application uses. Regular non-geeks tend not to see the value in digging up and replanting every time a new version of the OS comes out. Or to put it another way, the cost, work, and risk associated in upgrading the application (which is what they care about) is why they don't bother to upgrade the OS (which they do not care about). It's not a matter of being a cheap bastard, it's a matter of (a) sticking with something that you know works, and (b) not giving a damn what the splash screen looks like.
Quicken is $39.95. A software package that costs $10K to upgrade probably cost around $22K for the full version. Putting something like that on an end of life timer is a good way to watch your customer base switch to your nearest competitor.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Webchartnow.com. yeah, shameless plug.
I have been working in the POS industry since '04, I also have users that are up against the wall for that same reason. The solution was for me to become a Windows Embedded Partner and build Windows Embedded Standard 2009 kernel (pretty much same as XP Pro) for what ever machine they are on as PCI compliance demands that the operating system still be supported. Problem solved.
They're probably organized in some way or another already and it's not like they compete on the software they use. Just make sure to keep the requirements low and realistic and that the result is Free or that you own the code.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
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
It's kind of the opposite problem, but I encountered governmental agencies- for a large American city to remain nameless- who, today, continue to produce Web applications that require Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP or earlier. When we encountered problems accessing them on 64 bit Windows 7 w/IE 9 (Compatibility Mode turned out to be the workaround), I called the head of the department in question to tell her that, well, most new machines today would be running 64 bit Windows 7 + IE 9 (or better), so it might help them to write code that didn't require IE 6.
She asked me to call her (apparently so that she could tell me something off the record) and told me that, for her department, a "new computer" was anything about 5 years old. Apparently, 5 years back, they got a bunch of Windows XP computers w/MS development tools, and that's where they still are today. Budget issues won't allow them to upgrade, so they're stuck writing code that would have been mediocre 5 years back, and is utterly horrid now. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see many governmental entities in the same boat.
-Z
(Because when a piece of hardware costs $10,000 and up, and the software which connects to it is utterly useless without that expensive hardware - because it's basically just a dial showing a readout - of course a practical use of programer time is to add an extra pointless $1 anti-piracy hardware component to stop the millions of free copies which will soon flood the intertubes. Sigh.)
Back when I was writing software for industrial laser markers, I had this same discussion with the engineering VP. He wanted to start requiring dongles to run the software, and my reply was, "you mean this $150,000 machine isn't enough of a dongle for you?" I guess he just hadn't thought of it in those terms.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Do any of you think it would be feasible to start a company that makes FOSS medical software for doctors' offices? I imagine that what an office needs isn't very different from office to office. The company would earn its money long-term providing support for the software. It would also need to be compliant with HIPAA and all other regulations.
dosbox doesnt work?
Both are 16-bit windows programs, not dos programs...
There's enough money in continuing support contracts. I'm not sure why they need to sell a net-new product instead of just building update coding costs into the support contract they presumably sell with the software. If they aren't selling any support whatsoever, I'd argue their business model is flawed.
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
Some industrial stuff is still on ISA cards.
It's just that to go to new stuff needs lot's of change to work.
There this other eyetest software that works offline so install XP and don't hook it to the net.
lots of boards with sata run XP and anding the dirver packs to a XP disk is easy.
> 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.
How about the users who don't feel the need to buy a new version just because MS crapped one out?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This type of thing is not just a problem for Medical companies, but also Industrial control companies have issues with this too. Have you ever tried to find a ISA daq card and a Siemens motion controller from the late 80's or early 90s. Finding a P1 is hard, and the P1 is more expansive than an i3 (or even a i7 if you really need it now or want a new one) Updating the software to the latest hardware and software can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Usually requiring an on site visit to rural China or Germany's industrial heartland (or even worse Detroit) to install the new hardware and wire it in (some control cabinets require more than 10,000 terminations into the daq board). Who bears the cost of supporting the hardware? Is a small industrial automation firm supposed to tell customers that the software is only supported for 2-3 years, but the machine parts can last for 50? Who pays for a new 20 or 30 k software package every two years? Hell I know that my old employer probably pirated a million or more dollars in software just so that we had the ability to continue to support new hardware. If we had paid for both we would never have made it. Forcing people to upgrade on this timescale and with these prices will result in piracy. Big firms forget what its like to not have piles of cash.
Both are 16-bit windows programs, not dos programs...
Not necessarily a problem. I've got an ancient Oxford English Dictionary CDROM, which is a 16-bit Windows program so it won't run natively on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop. But I can run it in Windows 3.1 running in DOSBox. I put it in the Windows 3.1 startup folder, so when I launch DOSBox it automatically launches Windows 3.1, then the application running full-screen. It's not seamless (the clipboard doesn't work between OSes), but it's better than not running at all.
In any hospital lab you will see testing equipments running on XP-based computers - and most of those computers do not have the mean to run VM
You can't just chuck out an old computer and install a new one --- it is more than operating system, more than software --- there are a lot more involved, like calibration, like precision measurement, and so on
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
That often will not work. Especially with .NET stuff.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Companies which make these specialized software apps are no dummy, if for example they have a version of their software in XP, then, they will make their next version with better features on Win 7.
But in the end, it comes down to this:
Truly, your 'business' PC should be sandbox from all internet activities in a private network.
I have a real issue with this, win7 does not do a good job of supporting old protocols, I have tried and tried to get my old software running on it however I get a frozen os or the end users get a blank screen. All wikis on compatibility mode have been followed and to no avail. So basically what I will have is an unpatched server. It won't be the first time ms has left me in the dark. Im already working on converting everything over to linux.
They're stuck with XP.
We're currently making it work with a mix of downgrading OS's to XP, putting a compatible terminal server on the network, and some VMs.
But its entirely stupid. MS could have provided proper backward compatibility for their later OS's. Especially dos emulation is pretty terrible in windows 7 when compared to windows XP.
MS really needs to understand that compatibility and STANDARDS are their real market draw for established and loyal customer base.
MS keeps pissing away opportunities. For example, they could have made their new windows phones competely compatible with windows desktop software. some will say impossible, but I saw someone install windows XP on an android phone so clearly it's possible. I'm not saying those things should literally run windows. But if the android can emulate it well enough to play fallout 2 then MS should have been able to build in some sort of emulation into those phones.
Who wants an MS phone? No one. They have no niche. Imagine if they could run desktop windows software natively though? Bam... instant niche.
MS is stupid. Stop f'ing over your current customers to curry favor with segments of the market that don't even like you. It offends those that actually pay actual money to intentionally buy your productions by choice.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Run Windows 3.1x in DOSBox. It actually works surprisingly good. Windows 8 32-bit out of the box has 16-bit app support turned off by default, maybe that was the problem? Overall the NTVDM/WoW subsystem really hasn't changed since the XP days, if anything Win16 is a more stable target then Win32!
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
Compatibility mode?
WINE?
A VM?
Seems to me like there are a lot of different options available.
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
?!?!
But according to Slashdot, all software wants to be free, with vendors feeding their children via 'services.'
Before I get into that there is an issue many custom programs have to deal with and that is hardware keys, you know those ugly anti piracy plugs that use a USB, serial or parallel port that the software checks to make sure it hasn't been installed on an unauthorized machine. If it's a USB key you may be OK visualizing with VirtualBox not sure about VMWare or QEMU, but if the hardware key is other port you probably won't get it to run in a virtual machine. That said as long as the software in question doesn't really care if it runs on XP or NT it might be possible to try ReactOS.
She's not heard of a loan?
I used to be
No, it has nothing to do with professionals being penny pinchers.
That's the nature of running a small business. I can guarantee that you and every other dork who's saying, "Why don't they upgrade every year like I do?" or "Why don't they just write their own Linuxth app"? have never run a business. If you did, you wouldn't be saying such myopic garbage. Computer software in any business that's not software (that's 99.99% of all businesses, mind you) is a tool. It's something that enables the business to perform the money making function. A perfectly functioning tool isn't something that's supposed to be replaced every few years for the fun of it. Your business can't operate without doorknobs, but you don't change those every few years just for fun, do you? Your business can't operate with many countless important tools, and most of those don't have to be swapped out every few years, even though they're still working fine. The state of the software industry is so shitty, that regular people still don't believe that it's as rotten as it really is. And let me assure you, the software industry is shit right now. Everything has to be upgraded constantly. All software is released with bugs galore, and it all costs way too much.
Oh, and compared to smaller vendors, Microsoft really isn't all that bad. Most small and midsize software companies that sell specialty business software are really shitty to work with.
This is coming with somebody who was a developer for a decade, and has been a small business owner for the last decade.
I don't respond to AC's.
Windows 7 Professional (and higher comes with an included Windows XP Virtual Machine, fully licensed.
I see no reason why medical records software would not work in a virtual environment.
I believe Win8 x86 may have finally removed the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) required for running 16-bit apps. It's never been present in x64 versions of Windows - it's not possible to switch the CPU back into 16-bit mode after switching it up to 64-bit mode without first resetting it - but it's so incredibly legacy on win8, not to mention being a potential security liability, that I wouldn't be surprised if it was removed. (I'm assuming, of course, that you're running a 32-bit Windows 8 version.)
If you desperately need 16-bit support on a Win8 machine, your best bets are DOSBox (which emulates a 286 or 386 on machines where that mode isn't directly available) or virtualization (my Win8 x64 machine happily runs WFW3.11 on DOS 6.22 - a 16-bit OS - in a Client Hyper-V VM; please don't ask why). I think you need a 64-bit version of Win8 in order to use Client Hyper-V, but there are many options for 32-bit Windows hosts.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Including its drivers?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Of course it should. It just doesn't.
No, seriously, why should it be different just 'cause it's for a doctor?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yup. The easiest is to upgrade to windows 7 Pro or Ultimate and install XP Mode
XP mode won't fix what this whole thing is about, that support for Windows XP will end next year and continuing to run it will turn into a security risk. Windows 7's XP mode is nothing else than running Windows XP in a VM, and Microsoft will officially stop support for it next year, too.
Why doesn't XP mode work? XP mode is just a virtual machine running Windows XP. Maybe Microsoft left something out is all I can think of.
Because support for XP mode will end next year, too.
When I was still doing hospital work about 10 years ago, people were still installing NEW systems with OS/2 on there!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They actually disabled NTVDM by default but did not remove it in 32-bit version.
Most older programs seem to work really well with wine.
Most of these systems are single purpose and fit in more as an embedded system than anything else.
So, what is the attack vector? Most of the XP exploits in recent memory are related to peoples browsing habits and pieces of the OS used by the browsers being susceptible.
So, the fact that people aren't surfing the web probably removes 99% of the threat, leaving the remaining possibilities of a worm on the internal network exploiting an open system service (network share etc) that could be blocked or disabled.
If an exploit is found in a direct system service like that I'm betting MS rolls out a security patch anyway. Probably, just to avoid the liability issues (same way you get recall notices on 20 year old cars if the problem is severe enough and considered a manufacturing defect).
Its only once the installed base drops below 5% or so would I guess that MS really stops supporting it for critical problems. Once that happens its not going to be a target for new exploits anyway.
I'm just wondering how long it takes before they stop doing activations. I have a copy of XP that has never been activated, I'm keeping around just to see what happens. I suspect they release a no authorization patch at some point but right now if they did it I'm sure XP installs would take off again.
I'v run into this and solved it with a USB network hub, then forgot those existed. Thanks for the reminder. I hate dongles!
Cheap storage VM.
Businesses should be working a lot harder to find alternatives that do not rely on Windows. This compatibility issue will not be going away...because Microsoft does not consider compatibility to be all that important. Windows 8 users are likely to feel pain when Windows 10 comes out...and so on. Often, there are proprietary/OSS alternatives that will accomplish the objective at a reduced cost and with a far better chance of future compatibility. This doctor's office is not the first to have this problem and it will not be the last.
funny how you guys talk about the price of 3rd party software being the problem. I can't justify upgrading if I've got to pay $200/$300 for a windows license. It's just not worth it when XP is working fine for the rare case when I need to run a Windows app. Then again, I wouldn't upgrade to Win8 if they offered it for free.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
This should be a non-issue. Any niche, mission critical systems should be isolated and protected from any threats like viruses, worms, etc. already, and NOT placed on the network with free access to the internet, automatically installing Windows updates, etc.
If they are NOT, then you already have far bigger problems than Windows XP going end of life.
What I would do? Isolate host from the network. Take a ghost image. Back up data regularly. If it's not connected to the network, it doesn't really matter a shit whether it is running Windows XP, Windows 98, or whatever.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"Dream on, eye doctors don't have time to manage and QA an open source project."
They already do... for the software they buy. But the internal QA will be done by the people they hire, just as in the case of the closed product.
"and to think they'd risk money on a multi-year project with uncertain outcome is ridiculous"
Not my problem. But then, they are not entitled for whinning because they have to pay 10.000 for their piece of software. You can't take your cake and eat it too.
I don't want to pay 10.000$ to my doctor... Sometimes you just do.
nosig today
Another reason to ditch away closed source in favor of open alternatives. Maybe $10.000 would be a good start to pay a coder to release an entirely open source one.
The issue the poster noticed really rang a familiar tune with me. Not too long ago a local Optometrist asked me to come in to consult on this very problem. This particular Doctor was finding it difficult to upgrade as most of his Optometric equipment and the proprietary image viewers associated with the equipment required Windows XP. From the information he gave me, most of his equipment ranged anywhere from $50k all the way up to $400k. When looking into a Visual Field, I noticed they built in obsolescence. The machine was old, needed to be replaced, but in doing that, he would be forced to upgrade Windows. Upgrading windows however would also break functionality with other optometric equipment within his office. If he could buy all new modern equipment that may solve the problem. However purchasing a completely new set of instruments across the board would require far more than they could afford. With the advent of EMR's there is significant pressure to capture all data and populate the EMR. This seems to compound the issue the Doctor was having as every piece of equipment required something different in terms of which OS he must use. It is a difficult problem in smaller private offices that do not have as much purchasing power. In my experience I would encourage those facing similar problems to push the manufacturer for the necessary upgrades for their products. When purchasing a $400k retinal camera the manufacturer doesn't see a Windows license and server as a deal breaker. If older equipment won't integrate with a newer version then keep what is in place with an adjusted plan to replace the equipment itself. We decided to take on the task of integrating everything and ended up with a re marketable product that fills those gaps. This is my first /. post so I know better than to make a shameless plug for something I've built..
Either way there are many solutions out there for extending the life of a practice with high dollar equipment that grows obsolete. So this is my encouragement to the poster to just dig in and look hard.
WTF are the mods doing??? You are supposed to mod up INTERESTING (and ON TOPIC) posts. You $%&? mod up HALF THE POSTS!!!
I just spent all my mod points on down-voting - useless, I'm Don Quixote.
Why is nobody mentioning WINE
Software costs are a big problem but I'm not quite ready to hit the bottle yet.
If this is about a doctor in the US or Western Europe - then what is she complaining about? Ask her what she spend last year on the medical equipment in her lab. I bet it is a multitude of the software cost that she "can't afford". Most of these doctors pay more for the equipment in their lab than most of us for our house. In fact, if she really can't afford to shell out once in a decade 10.000 $ - then I'd suggest she chooses a different profession, and you better choose a different doctor.
1) If the software isn't strictly limited to software but interfaces with some medical hardware or fancy shit't you don't want to mess around. Go directly to 3)
2) Virtualize. Chances are it will work out of the box. Then you can enjoy the benefits of new hardware and a new OS and still use your old software.
3) Maybe you don't actually need an upgrade. There's no benefit of running your old software on a new OS, the only benefits will be peripheral. Just have a seperate machine running whatever new stuff you like and keep the legacy hardware for your mission-critical legacy software.
4) If you still want an upgrade it's more of an issue of wanting to upgrade you specialty software and hardware, which of course can be expensive. In this case you need medical consulting rather than just plain IT consulting. Maybe there's a cheaper solution available.
Windows 7 32bit can run XP and even 2000 drivers happily, I've done that on an old computer for a network card and graphics card. Dunno if it would have helped in the article's story but just running the XP driver on 7 can be a way out.
does using Win 7 32bit and running the XP driver for the dongle work?
Works acceptably well so far. Old isn't always terrible.
Background. Wife works as a distribution manager for a small indie publisher. Her job is mostly converting e-books to different formats and uploading them to the online sellers databases. To upload e-books to the Itunes store she has to use a program called IProducer. One day, Iproducer just stopped working when trying to upload to ITunes. Turns out Apple had started blocking access for any copy of IProducer that was too "old". Fine, it is a business need, upgrade IProducer, ooopsss. New version of IProducer won't install on the current OS version. Fine, business need, pay for new OS, then pay for new IProducer, then can sell on ITunes. Pretty neat setup when you think about it. There was nothing wrong with the old version of the Iproducer program, they just shut if off to force people to buy the new OS.
AFAIK, the XP software licensing isn't bound to a certain piece of hardware. Why not buy the new hardware and then re-install XP and the medical software on the new machine? :-0
wrt security, does the machine with the software really need to be connected to the internet?
I'm more concerned about what happens when the next version of TurboTax won't run on XP.
Plenty if reasons why. our oldestvsoftware requires a serial port to be present to allow us to emulate a modem. this is very hard on Win 7 machines, and cannot be bypassed.
instead of rewriting the system to not require that, we went with a new design, .NET and all, which isn't an improvement, but it works on 7.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Users of older software have three choices:
Live with limitations of older software
Pay for upgraded/up-to-date software
Replace computer system with manual process
How many years did they run the current software they have & what did they pay for that? How many years will they run the new software for their $10K investment?
If they are happy with the current software and their systems are not on the internet, there is no real need for security updates (as many others have noted).
They have apparently chosen to not pay for annual support (since that typically has the benefit of allowing the user to run the latest software release), how much have they saved? Is it enough to pay for the current release of the software?
The only thing they are a victim of is their decision to let the software support lapse...
Ken
Really? What utter nonsense. Not only can they afford it, they can also write off a large portion of the cost on taxes. This is just more evidence of the resistance of the practicing medical profession (not the research side) to taking up and keeping abreast of technology.
Interesting aside: Medical research is currently centred around controlled studies. Imagine the possibilities if medical research could access the potential data of 100's of millions of day-to-day patient doctor interactions. "Potential data" because currently medical practioners seemingly overwhelmingly refuse to make any progress in data collection.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Surprised no one has suggested it. Most Xp software should work fine on WINE by now. Not all -- but a database or billing program? Those should be fine.
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?
I'll answer your question once you can complete the thought: Rewarded by whom? And for how long? I ask for clarification because the answers to these questions help determine on what conditions someone can reasonably expect to have a course of study made available without charge.
Most of the posts here are not helpful. They appear to be by quite a few people who are trying too hard to be "cute" and not provide any real information. I have had quite a few years with this "EXACT" problem. The issues does not appear to be with the operating system as much as the people supporting the "cheap / inexpensive" applications. as a matter of fact in the last 10 or 12 Medical offices that I have installed, the software manufacturer either TOLD/WROTE or tried to write install scripts that would only work with XP. It turns out not only did the applications work fine, they even worked faster. The main issue is that the support staff did not realize applications install differeently on Networks and Windows 7 from how Windows XP stand alone machines install. Once you are able to explain that the application data lives in "XYZ" location rather than the local user, it is simple to repoint the application hard coded environmental variables. Most, if not all, of the software manufactuerers that "mandate Windows XP" are excited and truly appreciative of real documentation that shows how to install their application successfully in a new OS environment. Tigerview (for instance) - just purchased by Televere Systems - mandated for years that it would only work on XP. Before purchase they were completing work on the documentation based on what was taught to them over the phone and what documentation was sent to them. It helps if the posting people are trying to be helpful and not just "cute".
She showed me some of it and said one of the Dr.'s had developed it. It was written in MS Access. It may not be a first choice for many Slashdotters but most are familiar with it. At the time it had plenty of capability for handling the data in a small network like that of a Dr.'s office. And it did the job. Apparently, one of the Dr.'s was pretty computer and programming savy.
I then asked why they had developed their own and not used one of the packages that must be on the market. She said they had tried. The sales rep said the cost was about 90K+ and the upkeep was about 70K after that. Then he said the software was good and a great deal because they would get their money back through increased efficiency in the first year (no figures to prove it though). After the presentation, the medical staff were all shaking their heads. How would they get back 70K per year. . . not to mention the original 90K+? They had other expensive equipment to get too! So one of the Dr.'s, who apparently had experience programming and working databases, took a brief leave of absence and developed a database that worked for their needs. I doubt it took more than three weeks actual work time to develop what I saw. How much money do you think they are they saving now!?
The point is that databases developed by a large medical specialty software company may not be the end-all solution for the needs of small businesses in medicine. Some of you guys with good computer skills and savy in putting together what the customer wants could put something together for a better price. Think of it this way: some of these specialty software companies are BEGGING for good competition. :-)
Most comapnies can only afford to support the two most recent/ppoular releases.
Except this isn't a medical device. Its practice management and it isn't FDA certified, nor does it require certification
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
Windows Virtual PC.
Works great. We have XP only apps, so I run them with windows XP Mode in the windows virtual PC. easy to set up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
*Looks at his Win 7 Virtual PC running XP MOde*
* looks at dongle on win 7 box*
Sure whatever.
Nitwits, you are all nitwits.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anyone who doubts the security of Linux should just look at Android, and how secure and untouched by malware it is... oh wait.
Android sandboxing is good enough that most notable malware is designed to steal money from cellular subscribers through premium SMS. This means devices without a cellular radio or without an SMS subscription, such as tablets, aren't quite as vulnerable. In practice, the biggest hole I can see is that the SD card privilege is too coarse grained; it should have been based on a secure file chooser the way file system access is in OLPC Bitfrost and in the Mac App Store sandbox.
A properly locked down and patched Windows machine
The problem is that because new user accounts on Windows XP were created with administrator privileges, applications ended up relying on administrator privileges, making it difficult to run Windows XP "properly locked down". The UAC alerts in Windows Vista were designed primarily to fix this. As for "patched", the whole article is about the fact that that'll end in a year.
But what you would have us do?
Install two browsers. Run the stuff that needs FDA approval and IE 7 in IE 7 and the stuff that needs a modern browser in a modern browser. Plan migration to a competitor's FDA-approved, Windows 7/8-compatible product by the time Windows XP leaves extended support, and let "the company that writes the activex control (GE)" know of your plans.
Linux + Wine
Much better solution then both Windows XP and 7 in most cases of application software.
I disagree being lazy has nothing to do with it. I have found many specialized software applications while appealing because they are designed for the niche market are too costly a) to purchase and b) to costly to maintain. some users wish they hadn't spent that much on it. I had an incident many years ago with a building company they asked me to sit in as a technical consultant on some presentations on job costing software. I knew his current setup for software. Both companies provided great pitches but cost wise one was $15,000 and $5-8,000 in maintenance fees per year and the other one was in the same realm but more expensive. After they left I told him technically both solutions would do the job he was looking for but require him to tie himself to their companies to continue using the software as once he stopped paying the maintenance fees the software would shut down. I suggested he wait a month and purchase the job costing software from quicken (would have tied nicely with his accounting software) and spend $99 a little additional customizing and it would do the same job. with no fees. He choose to go with the $15,000 solution and exactly a month later he received a postcard with the job costing software for $99 in the mail.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
OK, you're stuck with XP after April 2014 because your specialized software only supports XP. And upgrades/replacements are unavailable or cost-prohibitive. What do you do?
* Make sure the system is patched completely.
* Have an up-to-date and working anti-virus on the system.
* Remove any and all extraneous software. Run only the software you absolutely need to run. Don't run other software, especially web browsers or mail clients on the system. Consider the computer now an appliance only for your specialized software. Remove Java, Flash, Acrobat, Air, Office, Shockwave, Silverlight, and any other likely attack vectors.
* Remove any unneeded Windows components (games, Messenger, etc.)
* Disable Internet Explorer (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/browsers/ht/disableiedef.htm)
* It's not always an option, but see if you can run the the software in a non-administrator account. If needed, change the properties on the shortcut to the software so just it, and only it, run in admin mode.
* Have an image backup of the system -- it's likely to break at some point. And since the software involved may not be supported anymore, getting it reinstalled may be difficult. (Even better, install an external hard drive and a copy of Acronis TrueImage or Macrium Reflect and schedule image backups once a week or so.)
* Consider moving the XP system to a virtualized system. That way the system will likely be faster (newer hardware) and can still be used for both general computing (web browsing, emails, Word, etc.) in Windows 7 or 8, and then XP for only your specialized software. And if the XP system is virtualized, backing it up is dirt simple -- just make a copy of the virtual machine files. Windows 7 Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate's XP Mode is good, but note that VMWare Player and Virtual Box have better performance, are easier to administer, and have better access to external hardware. You'll probably be better off using Player or Virtualbox if you can. If the system is virtualized, it's also extremely simple to clone it and roll it out to multiple systems. (Caveat: virtualization generally won't work if your specialized software needs access to serial, parallel, or usb to reach an external device, copy protection dongle, etc.)
* Firewall the system so only the the necessities can pass through. Probably file transfers out, but not in. Or only in from specific IPs (your servers). Lock out common ports (22, 23, 80, 443, etc.) -- you don't need them anymore. If needed, only allow the ports to connect to specific destinations, and not everywhere.
* Allow the antivirus to update, but turn off Windows Update -- it's not going to get anything new anyway.
* Disable any other unnecessary services.
* Look towards any other ways to lock the system down.
So it's all doable. And you can make the system (mostly) secure. But plan on it failing anyway. It's going to be fragile and vulnerable. Reduce your vulnerabilities as much as possible. And don't plan on using the XP system for anything but what is absolutely necessary.
Good luck...
Some of the specialty real estate software that I've dealt with cost more than that for upgrades. Ouch! *
It was a small Bay Area pharmacy that used Rx30, which ran on NT.
why not upgrade to GNU/Linux?
Because that would make the problem they are having WORSE. The issue isnt the cost of the windows upgrade, its the cost of the application upgrade, which doesnt change just because youre on linux (actually, it seems like those apps tend to be more as theyre "specialty"). Meanwhile, XP has been supported FAR longer than any other OS on the market right now.
Thats why not "just switch to GNU/Linux", because its a terrible idea that would make their problem worse. "Just use GNU Linux to avoid having to upgrade" is why I used to come across crap like SCO Unix and Red Hat Linux version 8 in companies. Good luck supporting that... but hey, at least its FOSS right?
Mainstream support for Windows OS usually lasts about two years after the next major version (e.g. XP to Vista to 7 to 8) is out, and extended support (mostly security updates) lasts for five years after that. (Source: Google windows lifecycle site:microsoft.com)
Some businesses still use punch cards or button-operated mainframes for doing core work such as accounting
no joke
Could some of this software run on a Linux system using CrossOver or Wine? If so, that seems the perfect long temporary solution (temporary until they find and implement a native Linux solution).
These people don't write these things to standards. That's the whole problem. If they did it'd already just work under Windows 7 and wouldn't need virtualising.
That works as long as the standard itself remains supported. The standard for device drivers changed between Windows XP and Windows Vista, and Windows 7 uses Windows Vista's driver model.
If you go into the lab world, it is unlikely that your trash can a lab instrument just because the operating system is no longer supported. The instrument vendor, always looking at their own bottom line, will, more often than not, want you to buy a new ($100K+) instrument. Of our core analytical instruments, (say 16 PC's) only one is running Windows 7 (don't get me started on Windows 8). Most are XP (very stable platform) but a few are Windows 2000 machines.
I was a project manager for installing a system for a large multinational chemical corporation. That installation (hardware and software) had to be FDA"Validated" This is not like engineering validation, it means every entry has to be demonstrated to work properly. Just starting with a user log in. You start with a valid name and PW. Print the input and print the output. Use a valid name plus an extra character and a valid PW. print the input and out put screens. Repeat for the PW with an extra character. Print input and output, Repeat with an extra character for both and print the screens. Repeat the above minus a character. IE, name, PW, and both Now do it with blank fields. You have to do this for every entry possible in the system. We started with a stack of printouts for the entries. When we finished we had a stack well over 4 feet tall and a second stack 2 or 3 feet tall. All hardware had to be traceable and proven on a monthly basis. If a router were changed it had to have a paper trail. It probably ran over half a million for the implementation including FDA Validation and that was in addition to the quarter million for the software. Security is also a nightmare. FDA regulations on the data handling pretty much doubled the cost of the system. Most of the end user systems like this dentist had are relatively simple and straight forward to write. You create a set of generic screens which can be tailored for most professions, but any time a change is made the whole works has to be proven to satisfy the FDA again. It's basically creating a set of custom screens tailored to the profession although the data should be encrypted, with integrity and security guaranteed. IOW Medical software that is FDA compliant is a royal PITA. It's no wonder it's so expensive.
They should have moved onto a time-limited licensing revenue base years ago, if not decades ago. As it stands, they only get one fee from the customer, but if they're on a yearly (or better, monthly) license, enforced by software or hardware as appropriate, then they'd have recovered many times the original license fee from the customer. And they'd have been able to enforce upgrading too - every time the customer re-licenses, they establish a new contract, including new terms. People pretty rapidly stop reading the release notes, so you'd be able to insert the mandatory upgrade notices into them years in advance of their implementation.
It's not ALL about revenue from the software rental (as opposed to software sales) income stream being good for the developing company. Often it's good for the customer, as these rental fees are normally a tax-deductible expense, which can offset a lot of other income.
What? That's not the problem? But this is Slashdot, home of software coders and support nerds. What is not to like about regular (and eventually larger) revenue streams coupled with the knowledge that customers who don't carry out upgrades to your cycle don't need to be supported?
(Please check the calibration on your sarcasm detector ; it should be reading 50%.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
no, software companies that write medical software QA products in their QA Departments, I've worked at a few. the doctor does no such thing. you think they keep a regression test suite in the file cabinet next to the lens kits?
Who in the Open Source community will pay to get the 'ware FDA-certified as compliant with the requirements of the PPACA?
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
The FDA thinks it is. My wife documents and tests software which runs a labaratory device, and the FDA is all over her company like white on rice with every new version of ware.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Once again we see the hidden disaster which is: creating *your database* in a *proprietary format*.
I learned that over and over until I quit doing it. OS and companies come and go at a fierce rate. A database needs to kept in the only format that is guaranteed to remain universally supported. Anything which doesn't support that is self-serving (not customer-serving) poison. EOL
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
...runs a labaratory device...
Did you actually read what I wrote???
Medical records software is not a medical device. Now, *maybe* the system in question interfaces directly to some medical device, but probably not--most medical records software, *especially* for small practices, does not.
As an employee of a medical device company 2.3% of our income is huge. Its almost our entire R&D fund (3.0% currently).
With industry average gross profit margins around 65% and operating margins around 14%, I believe there are funds available to cover the tax.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Buying software for small companies (eye doctors, chiropractors, etc.) doesn't make sense - especially now that the US gov't is changing electronic records policies/requirements.
All those practices are being encouraged to upgrade now with incentives - as long as they upgrade to a certified platform.
But with the gov't's certification level rising year after year, why would anyone *buy* software each year? (most practices don't upgrade their installed software every 5 years, right?) Especially now that some vendors are doing even more lock-in/refusing access to your own data, it requires installing and upgrading your own PCs and server(s) - hardware and Windows versions and databases and...
Use an online SaaS. Granted, there is only one working solution out there right now for eye care specialists (www.revolutionehr.com), but it works on modern browsers, integrates with several brands of optometrist equipment, has billing, email, inventory, scheduling... most of what you need. And not only do they help with importing your data, they'll also help you export it if you decide it's not for you.
(disclaimer: former dev)
8-PP
"no, software companies that write medical software QA products in their QA Departments"
That explains why no medical software had ever a single bug when on the while... oh, wait!
Anyway, that was not my point. Regarding internal (usually white box) QA, what would be the difference if instead of looking for customers after the fact they reached an agreement with a medical association before start working?
"Security" software is the best at not working on the computer you want it to work on, ie any thing newer then the software publishing date. Though I am kinda happy with the web interface movement in this area, it is still not right. IE software that will not run on anything but windows 2000 due to drive and dongle issues.
I am using Windows XP. I am a senior citizen on a pension.But I am also disabled and living in a Nursing Home.With those expenses I cannot afford to up grade or even buy another computer.I wish there was some sort of support even limited in some way. So I at least will not be one of those unfortunate folks left out in the cold.