Windows XP? Pfff! Parts of the Royal Navy are running Win ME

“We’re 5-10 years behind the rest of the world,” said one, only half-joking. Enterprise was built in 2003 and most of the IT infrastructure aboard her dates back to then, with new OSes and mission software installed and patched as required.

“All USB ports are locked down,” added PO Parry. The usual network policies to stop people from doing IT-related things they shouldn’t are all enforced here; almost nobody has access to the ship’s CD/DVD-RW drives, while the different networks aboard do not talk to each other and personnel are ordered not to try to move data from, say, the DII network to the maritime survey equipment network.