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Dear Radek,

It is a problem where unfortunately a blanket IT ban on those computers isn't really a helpful solution.  While we can all debate the why's and wherefores of vendors not having had their software moved to Win10 by now, but the reality is that some of these systems will not be moved over in time, if at all.  IT, while I understand their security concerns and general policies, having no backup plan isn't really helping people who have no choice but to run outdated Oss.

While some vendors are actually working on testing Win10 rollouts for their acquisition software, these are unlikely to be out in time for the cut-off date and others still just won't be investing money into developing software for outdated platforms anyway (and the size of some companies I think it is entirely justified as well).

I actually spoke to our IT people and explained the situation, and said that if they blanket ban systems that are still on Win7/XP then we will have a lot of very expensive equipment sitting idle being unable to be used and a lot of very irate researchers who won't be able to do their experiments.  This seemed to have a general softening of their stance and a solution was then found to isolate those computers that would still need to be on Win7/XP and place them on their own little firewalled secure island within the network, (something that has tended to be the norm anyway at some institutes I've worked at in the past), while allowing specific web-addresses and internal network locations to be white-listed for access.

Simply requesting everyone to upgrade to Win10 isn't the answer, unless IT are willing to offer financial assistance to help with the upgrades.  Often what we have found is an upgrade of the PC of said microscope will be excessively expensive, which often then also means the camera adaptors or some other hardware interface no longer works and these need to be upgraded as well.  It isn't as simple as just installing Win10 on a system because as we all know from the Leica issues recently, this hasn't been tested with the microscope software/hardware and the vendors will not support it if it doesn't work.

In my experience, you need to explain the reasons why, the financial and support implications of upgrading and the effect it has on the end user/researcher and the potential lost revenue/wasted money.  Other than that, ask IT to create a networked PC that you can use as a file dump that IS running Win10, then use that as your intermediary computer.

Good Luck
Mark


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From: Confocal Microscopy List <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Radek Machan (Dr)
Sent: Thursday, 21 November 2019 11:56 AM
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Subject: Upgrading to Win 10

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Dear All,

I'm sure more of you have faced the same situation and some have solved it already - the upgrade to Win 10 at microscope computers. Our University IT policy will not allow any machines running Win 7 connect to the University network after the end of Win 7 support in January 2020, which makes it a pretty urgent issue to tackle.

We have confocals from Zeiss and Leica. I've asked the vendors about the upgrade and they claim that upgrading the current workstations will result in instability. Their standard procedure would be to sell us new workstations, for which we have no budget. So the options left to us are:

EITHER upgrade the current workstations to Win 10 ourselves - this makes sense only if the instability the vendors talk about means that the configuration hasn't been verified to be stable (but might as well work perfectly fine). Any experience with this strategy?

OR to find a way how to disconnect the workstations from the University network without losing the possibility to transfer data via the network (hide them behind a NAS?) and keep the Win 7. Anyone can suggest a good solution of this type?

I hope some of you can share your experience with tackling the same issue and help us figure out what strategy will work best.

Thanks!
Radek

Radek MACHAN, Ph.D. (Senior Research Fellow) SCELSE Advanced Biofilm Imaging Facility<http://www.scelse.sg/Page/imaging-facility> Manager Nanyang Technological University #B1, 60 Nanyang Drive, SBS-01N-27 Singapore 637551