back to article Met Police laggards still have 18,000 Windows XP machines in use

Thousands of Metropolitan Police computers are still running Windows XP more than a year after the force promised to upgrade them, mayor Sadiq Khan has admitted in response to a Greater London Assembly question. Moreover, just eight police machines in the UK capital are running Windows 10, the latest version of the operating …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    The real reason!

    Anyone who's worked in Met IT knows the real reason.

    Met Commander - "What 'puter thingies are the provincial forces using?"

    IT drone - "Windows 10"

    Met Commander - "No good for us then, this is the Met!"

    IT drone - "Err..."

  2. Stevie

    Bah!

    And yet Wannacry did *not* bring the police to their digital knees when everyone else was knobbled.

    Must be doing *something* right.

  3. mags4dorset

    magazine advertising in Dorset

    http://www.mags4dorset.co.uk are Windows 10 and we are happy surely the police should have the same level of access as potential criminals, unless its standard admin departments and its worded to make the MET seem inept

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    And will happen every time around as 10s of 1000s of desktops X multple bespoke S/W -->

    Total clusterf**k of a migration.

    Each time.

    Every time.

    I am not clairvoyant. It's not an act of $deity.

    It's a completely f**king predictable consequence of the organizational environment. And £30K for the PM for this? Are you f**king kidding me? Big performance bonuses at least I'd have thought.

    When is the time to start planning in the migration to the next generation of desktops?

    Simple, while you're still planning what should be in the current generation upgrade of course.

    Given what the Met does TBH I'd wonder how many of those machines spend all their time just running the Line-Of-Business apps, (IE Copshop-in-a-box) and the users sole actual contact with Windows is when they start it up (or more likely log in, as it's probably not been shut down for a month).

  5. JaitcH
    Thumb Up

    VN Has the UK Plod (and UK Nuclear Subs) Beat! The WHOLE Government Runs On . . .

    XP in the public facing offices. There are some better systems in higher offices of the government bureaucracy. 486 computers are popular, too.

    AND we have the corner on certain output devices - ancient Epson Dot Matrix printers. But at least they can handle handle invasive bugs looking for a new home. C-R-U-S-H!

    Our government also uses Google Translate when dealing with non-Vietnamese speaking people - the only problem is Google's Vietnamese is not perfect!

    1. sitta_europea Silver badge

      Re: VN Has the UK Plod (and UK Nuclear Subs) Beat! The WHOLE Government Runs On . . .

      "XP in the public facing offices."

      Oh, that must be why I see such a lot of these in my mail server logs:

      Jun 2 04:14:01 mail6 xmas-milter.pl[3996]: [VN], connect_callback(): [14.191.177.83], N=[1], [[14.191.177.83]], [Windows XP], REJECTING SPAMBOT BLACKLISTED [VN,2] in ...

      Jun 6 10:22:59 mail6 xmas-milter.pl[23885]: [VN], connect_callback(): [210.245.110.15], N=[1], [[210.245.110.15]], [Windows XP], REJECTING SPAMBOT BLACKLISTED [VN,2] in ...

      Jun 14 18:11:26 mail6 xmas-milter.pl[4965]: [VN], connect_callback(): [113.23.25.204], N=[1], [[113.23.25.204]], [Windows XP], REJECTING SPAMBOT BLACKLISTED [VN,2] in ...

  6. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Irony

    It's somewhat ironic that it's the Tory GLA members who are moaning about this when it's the Tory government that's slashed police budgets.

    My ironyometer is registering about 20 kilospoons right now.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No contractors either

    I suspect that there is a lack of people to do any migrations.

    All the police IT jobs I've come across recently are classed as within IR35, so it's very unlikely they will have anyone applying. I certainly won't.

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