Schools run their multi-thousand dollar powered microscopes on Vista. Warships often use Windows 99, or slightly later. Businesses sometimes have ‘servers’ with specialty software, running off of operating systems old enough to use Lotus.
How does this happen?
There are no apps that can be made ‘forwards-compatible’ forever without the OS itself adapting a bit to prevent said app from dying. Even if the OS did, the reality is that hardware changes in ways that just cannot work with old software. Windows 10 ran on 32 or 64 bit machines, but Windows 11 only runs on 64 bit, so devices that might have been fine from the Vista era are now stuck at Windows 10, not to be updated again minus a serious overhaul of the device itself. Swapping from punch cards to magnetic tape must have been similarly annoying and difficult for the computer scientists of the 60s and 70s who’d become accustomed to it – the difference may be too great to build tools to adapt one to another, leaving critical machines to live the past in the present.
Older computers were not designed with the plug-and-play sensibilities of build-your-owns today. Older devices that happen to have computers in them, like microscopes and gas spectrometers, are even less malleable and even more expensive by virtue of their firmware and hardware also running off of ancient software. Schools and research labs may want to keep their equipment up to date, but simply cannot due to either cost or availability; that is assuming the manufacturer of the microscope that they need to use actually has a newer model with a newer OS plugin, which may not be the case. Even then – if the device still works, why toss it? Why not keep it? Why add another 5-digit expense to the yearly statement when you could simply learn to work around the inconvenience of an old OS, especially on a device that’s probably not touching the internet that often?
Specialty equipment makes sense. But the old computers which could be updated, if not for their hardware? That hardware thing is very tricky to work around, especially in today’s era of hand-holdy operating systems that hate it when the user doesn’t use the setup wizard, even in business settings. It would take major altering of the software if the hardware can’t be changed. Switching to Linux is an option. Not a great one for people who aren’t confident in their computer abilities, but an option. Learning how to get whatever specialty software was worth all this this running, however, will be another hill to climb after that, a much tougher one than simply getting it installed. At that point, upgrading the device is the more sensible option if other integrations aren’t preventing it!
