For those of you who are old enough to remember: Windows Update used to be a website that scanned your machine using an ActiveX control.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Not just them. There are very likely businesses using them as legacy systems to run machinery they can’t afford to upgrade.

    • Jon Von Basslake@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Or that use old machines because they work and their entire workflow is based on it. Like, I remember someone (might have been LGR… it was some retro computing youtuber at least) mention that they knew a print shop or something that was still using like win98 or 2000 for their entire production (as in, handling the printing, setting the size etc.) and maybe even the sales terminal…

      And I’ve read horror stories of places like machining shops running their cnc setup off of a win98 machine because the cnc router or whatever it’s called just won’t work over anything but parallel port, or that the software needed for that specific router doesn’t run on newer machines.

    • Yendor@reddthat.com
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      2 years ago

      The systems running your power grid, your water mains and your local trains are all XP or older.

      • iod@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        The old lady behind the counter at our bus station is using dos to handle the payments and print the tickets

          • iod@lemmy.ml
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            2 years ago

            Yeah she just uses the keyboard to input a few fields very quickly. It’s that machine’s sole purpose. But I assume it’s still connected to some network to get data about ticket availability and I wonder how secure it is.