On April 8, Microsoft will no longer be supporting its Windows XP operating system. The problem? A lot of the computers campus-wide run off of that system.
The Youngstown State University Information Technology Services Department has established a plan to replace the operating system in computers campus wide.
When an operating system is no longer being supported by its manufacturers, it could be because the program could be more vulnerable to viruses and doesn’t get the normal upgrades it needs.
“Microsoft will not be providing anymore updates to [Windows XP],” Lloyd Painter, the project’s manager, said. “What is going to happen is it will make that certain operating system vulnerable to attacks that is the reason we need to upgrade them.”
Even though ITS is already in the process of this change, Painter said employees have more then one thousand computers to upgrade.
“We will be working on them over the course of the next few months,” he said.
ITS will upgrade all the computers to the Windows 7 operating system.
“There is no coast from an operating windows perspective because of our arraignment with Microsoft,” Painter said. “But we will have to be purchasing some new PC’s as apart of this.”
Painter said that the total cost of replacing the older computers is estimated out to be around $200,000.
“The older PC’s are not able to support the Windows 7 operating system, so those pc’s will have to be replaced with newer ones.” Painter said.
Though the upgrades will have to be given all over campus, Painter said that certain departments have higher priority then others.
“We are doing one department at a time,” Painter said. “We have prioritized the departments in terms of which ones we are doing first.”
With certain departments being prioritized Painter felt it had to do with how the certain departments affect the school in a bigger way.
“It more has to do with the risk of a particular department,” he said. “We did a risk assessment and those that were high risk in terms of keeping the operations of the university going without any problems made them ranked higher.”
The department plans to be finished with completing the project by mid-June.