Whitehouse Still Running XP

[Gerowen]

Was watching the "preview" of the Obams's state of the union tomorrow, and as a geek I noticed something. Is that a Windows XP login in the background? Not that I have any particular problems personally with XP if it's properly configured, but most of the other places have already upgraded to Vista at the least, and most of our boxes are running 7, and we're nowhere near being as high up the governmental food chain as these guys.

Anyway, just a random observation, thought I'd share, :p

[Daedroth]

Is it really that much of a shock? Moving from XP to 7 (forget Vista) is a major change, requiring all sorts of infrastructure and configuration changes. (Namely server operating systems and group policy). Windows XP works well, so there's no real reason to change. Having been a part of a project to introduce Windows 7 to an XP network, it isn't easy.

[Gerowen]

Is that a picture of a person bleeding to death in the top right corner?

Is it really that much of a shock? Moving from XP to 7 (forget Vista) is a major change, requiring all sorts of infrastructure and configuration changes. (Namely server operating systems and group policy). Windows XP works well, so there's no real reason to change. Having been a part of a project to introduce Windows 7 to an XP network, it isn't easy.

No it's not a "shock", but since we (Army) were getting pushed and pushed and pushed to Vista, and now we're being pushed and pushed and pushed to 7, it's interesting to see these guys are still hanging out on XP, :p

[Daedroth]

Is that a picture of a person bleeding to death in the top right corner?

It does look like it, but looking closer, it looks like there are wings, and that red 'pool' could be a shadow.

[FMH]

This is really not surprising. Even if you see those Discovery documentaries about companies like CERN, Lockheed Martin, Darpa and etc., they also use XP, for some of the most advanced researches/analysis running in the world! :laugh:

[Japlabot]

The larger you go, the more likely they are to be on XP. Consumers will always be on Windows 7 first before large organisations because Consumers only need to upgrade a handful of computers, Large Organisations need to upgrade thousands, without a hitch. 1000s is more than 1 so it takes 1000s of times longer to get everything in place. Most organisations and consumers did not upgrade to Vista at all, skipped it entirely, even though most were already licensed to use it. The huge cost to upgrade (in terms of labour) for so little benefit is not worth it to go to Vista.

If security updates and new hardware support was not about to be stopped for XP, many organisations would not be planning Windows 7 upgrades either. To an organisation, Windows 7 themes and so on has 0 business benefit when their staff would be just as effective if they were using XP. Not to mention staff training costs. Not everyone can pick up new systems by themself and need someone to guide them. In a large organisation, this is quite a lot of man hours.

[Blaze_Zewi]

If it an't broke don't fix it. :laugh:

[Neo003]

I thought they'll are apple f*'s

[thealexweb]

Argos UK's embedded machines use Windows 98, so it could be worse :p

[Miuku.]

Ah, vendor lock - isn't it a wonderful thing?

[Steven P. Administrators]

I remember a few years back the posts and uproar that US submarines were still running Windows NT4 :p

[Arachno 1D]

If I remember rightly Nasa still uses a form of DOS for some of its hardware

[Phouchg]

Secrets are more easily wikileaked if the victim is running an older OS. And we wouldn't want it to be any other way, would we? :p

More importantly, though, why oh why Neobond has changed profile pic to some random Neowin logo? :D

[fsX]

Considering how "innovative" it was for the secret services to allow Obama to use a Blackberry, it's clear they don't care much about having recent stuff.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

I remember a few years back the posts and uproar that US submarines were still running Windows NT4 :p

what in the blue hell happened to that awesome avatar

[Arachno 1D]

Mind it must be the most secure installation of XP ever invented :whistle: :D

[Ci7]

maybe the stuff is afraid of change :p

renumber someone in government minstry was **** of new office '07 saying "oh huh keep that thing a way from my pc,it take me ages to find program functions! "

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Considering how many corporate or government entities with lesser security requirements than the White House still run XP this doesn't surprise me.

'If it ain't broken, don't fix it!' applies.

[Hum]

No money for software updates, after paying for the wars.

[44MLX]

XP is much more simle. Windows 7 complex for Whitehouse users.

[v1ewer]

The State of the Union address takes place in the House of Representatives chamber of the US Capitol:

http://en.wikipedia....e_Union_address

US Congress may still use ol' Windows [House majority are Republicans, what do you expect? ;-)], but the White House knows better...

http://en.wikipedia....ters#Government

But some offices [like the 1 pictured] may still run XP for compatibility reasons, until the moving-to-Linux process is completed.

[00000000000000000000000000]

Having Windows 7 instead of XP won't make the PCs that much more secure (internally) because XP probably has some government policies and restrictions added. Example: USB drives disabled, EFS, can't run executables, etc.. Making the change to Win7 would seem beneficial but governments don't operate on a out-of-the-box software basis, they have labs that rigorously test everything including windows updates after MS officially releases them, which are probably not automatically installed on their stations like home/small business users. With that said, governments WILL switch to 7 if they realize that there are unfixable security holes which only Win7 addresses.