> A while back we looked into upgrading one of the computers to Windows Vista. By the time we added up the money it would take to buy new licenses for all the software, it was going to cost $50,000 or $60,000 [£38,000 to £45,000]

I wonder if at some point virtualizing, and potentially adding a modern control layer on top of their current machines is a potential path forward.

No it isn’t. I tech infrastructure gets the same treatment as regular infrastructure: we don’t want to build a new one because the old one kinda still works and a new one would cost us money.

The reality is that you need to keep upgrading and building new infrastructure. Because inevitably the old one won’t work or no longer be enough to support the needs of the users. And when that happens, it will be even more painful and expensive to get it up and running again. And the best case scenario would be that no one loses their lives over it.

This is what I see in a lot of systems. E.g. costco inventory manager you can see at their manager stations looks like its old dos software but its running in some sort of container on a modern i5 workstation. Some of my friends in sales use similar setups.