Its the end of an era. Microsoft kills Windows XP support this week, even though over 25 percent of all PCs in the world are powered by the outdated OS. The company has been trying very hard to get holdouts to upgrade. It has even offered $100 in discounts to get them up to Windows 8.1. While individual users are out of luck, governments with millions of dollars to burn can get special treatment. Following UK’s splurge on a year of extra support for Windows XP, the Dutch government went ahead and struck a similar deal with Microsoft.
Webwerald, a Dutch news website, reports that under this deal Microsoft will provide software support for Windows XP until April 2015. It isn’t known how much this deal cost the government, but reportedly it keeps between 34,000 and 40,000 Windows XP powered machines covered for another year. UK government paid £5.5m for its deal.
While Microsoft has relaxed the rules a bit, it now requires that all government PCs be upgraded to either Windows 7 or Windows 8 before the extended support contract ends next year. So essentially this just buys them a year’s worth of extra time to get everything ready for an upgrade. Microsoft reiterates that “agreements such as these do not remove the need to move off Windows XP as soon as possible.”
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