London's Metropolitan Police still has Windows XP running on 27,000 PCs

A new report revealed that London's Metropolitan Police still has 27,000 of its PCs running Windows XP. Microsoft officially ended support for the OS over two years ago to the general public.

According to the BBC (via Neowin), the "Met" signed a special agreement with Microsoft that allows the department to keep getting support and updates for their many Windows XP PCs. That agreement, which cost the Met and London taxpayers £1.65 million, is due to end in April 2017.

The force will be updating 6,000 Windows XP PCs by the end of September, but only to Windows 8.1. London Assembly member Andrew Boff says he would like to see the Met move to the current version of the OS.

Mr Boff said the force should instead upgrade to the latest Windows operating system, Windows 10. "I'll be asking a question and, depending on the written reply I get, I'll then be questioning the mayor on whether or not they should start a review," he said. "We spend an awful lot of money on information technology - we've got to get the best bang for our buck."

Even though official support for Windows XP ended in April 2014, the latest OS market share numbers from Net Applications showed that it is still being used by 10.34% of all PCs worldwide.

John Callaham