The first big victim of not upgrading to Windows 10 in time
The German government is facing a bill of around $887,000 (800,000 euros) for failing to upgrade to Windows 10 ahead of the Windows 7 end of support date last week. German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the German Federal Ministry is looking to secure at least 33,000 machines still running Windows 7, which involves paying Microsoft a fee per device for a year of extended security protection.
Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 last week, but millions of PCs still run the operating system. While Microsoft won’t be issuing public security updates and fixes for Windows 7, businesses who haven’t migrated to Windows 10 in time can pay for Extended Security Updates (ESU). It’s costly if you still have thousands of machines running Windows 7, just like the German government.
Extended updates for Windows 7 Enterprise, used in most big businesses, is approximately $25 per machine, and the cost doubles to $50 per device in 2021 and again to $100 in 2022. It’s even worse for Windows 7 Pro users, used in smaller firms, which starts at $50 per machine and jumps to $100 in 2021 and $200 in 2022. These costs will vary depending on the volume of PCs in use at a business, and some larger firms can negotiate discounts for thousands of machines.
The German government is reportedly in the middle of an upgrade to Windows 10, but it hasn’t managed to get every PC upgraded in time. Handelsblatt reports that 20,000 of 85,000 machines in Berlin government offices are still running Windows 7, highlighting the issue the German government has.
Microsoft has also started using full-screen notifications for Windows 7 users, alerting them that the OS is no longer supported. The software maker used Windows 7 notifications throughout 2019, so people had a lot of warning about the end of support. Millions of machines are still running Windows 7, though, so we’re bound to see a lot more cases of businesses paying high sums to protect their machines from viruses, ransomware, and more.