All of the hardware that's attached to workstations in our hospital are designed for windows. Certain departments have specific needs as well and depend on software that is Windows only. After decades of Windows it develops an insidious grasp that is difficult to escape, even moreso when your entire industry is dependent on Windows.
Switching over to windows wouldn't just be extremely costly from an IT perspective but would require millions of dollars in new hardware. We are in the red in part because of the pandemic, existing problems in our industry accelerated by the last few years, and because a large percentage of our patients are on Medicare, which the fed govt shrinks fixed service payments for every year.
I can't imagine convincing our administration to switch over to Linux across the hospital without a clear, obvious, and more importantly short-term financial payoff.
I'm working for a company that has no Windows boxes at all, anywhere. Sure, some Windows software has no alternatives. We're running all of those programs in VMs.
Does this make financial sense? Probably not in the short run, which is an issue for most companies nowadays. But in the long run? I think it's the right choice.
It is not the hardware designed for windows but the driver code, which is most probably written in basic C, which most probably can be cross-compiled for usage outside Windows – so instead of millions of dollars in new hardware it is really thousands in porting the drivers and GUIs to the new platform. What works on windows in 90% cases is an easy porting job for the manufacturer, they just won't be doing it unless someone stops paying for windows version and be willing to pay for alternative platform port.
Anyway, i totally agree with you. The convincing part here is short of clear and obvious for administration types. Until MS finally bricks it's OS and renders it totally unusable they can continue to do whatever shit they want and keep mocking their loyal customers forever.
Switching over to windows wouldn't just be extremely costly from an IT perspective but would require millions of dollars in new hardware. We are in the red in part because of the pandemic, existing problems in our industry accelerated by the last few years, and because a large percentage of our patients are on Medicare, which the fed govt shrinks fixed service payments for every year.
I can't imagine convincing our administration to switch over to Linux across the hospital without a clear, obvious, and more importantly short-term financial payoff.