Yes, it is dumb that airports, stores, and hospitals run very outdated software, but imagine how hard it would be to upgrade all those machines, especially considering the programs that might not work well with never operating systems and the fact that staff would have to be trained all over again. Not to mention, most of these businesses and services can't afford any downtime and need to make sure that everything is compatible (so, update one PC, you have to update all of them). In theory, I am still a fan of updated systems, but then again, I have a 10 year old XP installation at home, which I've been preparing to reinstall for a year or so (don't really use that PC, but still)

I agree, but some stores are just lazy (or don't want to spend money) in my opinion, to me it seems like they started outdated, in Australia, they only just added in self serve checkouts, Windows XP!

Why? It's cheaper, and yet they're wondering why they break down all the time. Those computers were probably never built to scan barcodes any weigh fruit, they were probably originally an old server computer or something. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

I'm not expecting they gear them up with gtx 1080's or something, but not old Pentium processors. And don't get me started on those animations that they play...

They just seem so vulnerable. They literally type the pin code for the admin in front of you when something isn't working. Admittedly they do have to swipe their card, but what I'm thinking, is one day, one will crash, someone will wait for it to restart and they will take full control over it and get stuff for free... 😅

@runfrodorun
yeah, you said it better than I did x)

A friend of mine is an accountant but she specialized on modernization of companies. She takes a company that uses old systems (some are still using just paperwork!) and updates them. Boy, she has a lot of battle stories!

I have a friend working in creating IT strategies and systems for big organisations. He described the transition of a system for a bank as "making a heart transplant while the patient is running a marathon".
Its often just too fragile and not worth taking the risque to upgrade.

Actually, I'm making software for parts of the hospitals.
Agile wise, so its already running in a few hospitals.

The company I work at would love to create all the software for hospitals.

We'll get there

Even older systems (in fact especially older systems) need to be kept up to date on security patches. There are a lot of vulnerabilities in those older systems that have been fixed on newer systems. So it's not like you can really get away with not updating them. On top of that Windows is one of the worst in terms of how many patches it constantly needs.

That is a very dumb ass excuse to not put proper effort and budget on checking your god damned infra, network, computers, software, etc.