It looks like the UK Government is not the only Government Agency to drag out upgrading from Windows XP. The UK Government recently paid Microsoft £5.5 million to extend support for Windows XP and reportedly, the IRS in the States will follow suit.
Support for Windows XP officially ended on April 8, meaning that Microsoft will no longer provide support or security updates for the aging OS. However, governmental computers can’t be left vulnerable, so the IRS will be paying Microsoft millions of dollars for custom support to keep their machines secure and functional. The actual amount is unknown.
Right now, over half the agency’s PCs still run XP, despite Microsoft telling the whole world that it would stop support for the OS in 2014 six years ago. The plan is to have all IRS machines running Windows 7 by the end of the year.[signoff predefined=”Enjoy this?” icon=”icon-users”][/signoff]
